A high-powered replication study finds no effect of starting or stopping hormonal contraceptive use on relationship quality

A number of recent studies have implicated that incongruent use of hormonal contraceptives (HCs) negatively affects various aspects of women’s romantic relationships. It has been suggested that women with incongruent HC use (a discrepancy in HC use status between when they first met their current partner and the time of study participation) report less sexual satisfaction and higher jealousy scores compared to women with congruent HC use. A similar effect has also been hypothesized for general relationship satisfaction, and recent findings suggest that the association between HC incongruency and general relationship satisfaction is moderated by women’s perceived facial attractiveness of male partners. Using a large convenience sample (N = 948) of Finnish women, we attempted to replicate previously reported findings but found no support for the HC congruency hypothesis, despite excellent statistical power (≥98.7%) to detect previously reported effect sizes. Instead, after dividing our sample into four groups based on HC congruency/incongruency, we found that the largest differences in jealousy, sexual satisfaction, and relationship satisfaction scores tended to be found between women who were consistent HC users and consistent non-users (i.e., between women with different kinds of congruent HC use). We also detected a significant main effect of current HC use on jealousy. We conclude that, as the effect size of the HC incongruency effect reported in previous studies was small, unequal distributions of current HC users within congruent and incongruent HC user groups may give rise to spurious HC incongruency effects in studies using small samples

Being Bullied by Same-versus Other-Sex Peers:Does It Matter for Adolescent Victims?

<p>The negative consequences of peer victimization on psychosocial adjustment are well documented. The consequences, however, may depend on who the bullies are. In this study, we examined the consequences of same- versus other-sex victimization. The sample consisted of 4,941 Finnish adolescents (ages 14-15; 47.7% boys). We used structural equation modeling to examine both concurrent and longitudinal associations of same- and other-sex victimization with depression, negative perception of peers, and social self-esteem. Both same- and other-sex victimization were related to psychosocial adjustment. Concurrently, the victimization experiences with same-sex peers in particular were associated with generalized cognitions about peers, whereas being bullied by other-sex peers was related to adolescents' social self-esteem more strongly than victimization by same-sex peers. The longitudinal associations, in turn, showed that only being bullied by boys had carry-over effects on girls' adjustment. Other-sex victimization can have serious consequences especially on girls' psychosocial adjustment. [Supplementary material is available for this article. Go to the publisher's online edition of the Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology for the following supplemental resource: Complementary information on model fit indices and the nested model chi-square difference tests.]</p>