1Running Head: QUANTATITIVE ARTICLE CRITIQUE

2QUANTATITIVE ARTICLE CRITIQUE

Article Critique of Adolescent Egocentrism, Risk Perceptions, and Sensation Seeking among Smoking and Nonsmoking Youth

Jessica Gore

Georgia Southern UniversityComment by Amelia Davis: I have put this in correct APA format including font and headers. Please use this format for future papers.

IntroductionIn this study conducted by Frankenberger (2011), the researcher looked at the effects and associated correlations of adolescent egocentrism, risk perceptions and sensation seeking among smoking and nonsmoking students taking a health class at a predominately white middle-class high school in the Pacific Northwest. In order to obtain the desired information for the study, Frankenberger made use of the widely used Adolescent Egocentrism Scale (AES) and the 40-item Form V Sensation Seeking Scale (SSS), as well as other closely related questions on the students experience with smoking cigarettes. Through the literature review, the article explains theories that Frankenberger based her study on such as Elkinds theory of adolescent invulnerability and Bloss theory of identity development as well as how gender influences the study. The methods of the study is thoroughly described in the hypotheses, subjects and instruments used to obtain the data for the study. All of the researchers findings are discussed through the statically analysis of tests that were administered to the sample as well as the researchers interpretations of the findings and possible hypotheses to explore in another related study.Comment by Amelia Davis: Nice introduction/summary. Purpose of the Study It stands to reason that a teen who feels no inclination whatsoever to smoke would develop different perceptions toward smoking risk than would a teen who has been curious enough to try smoking at least once (577). The major question within this study was whether or not adolescent egocentrism has an effect on an adolescents desire to smoke and if that desire was based on their sensation-seeking tendencies. The study also explored how these desires and tendencies related to an adolescents view of the risks of smoking for themselves and others as well as how many of their peers they believed smoked. Review of the LiteratureComment by Amelia Davis: In this section I feel as though you have restated the literature rather than summarized the literature the authors based their study on. The point of a critique is the summarize and evaluate the information provided. According to Vartanian (2000), teen smoking and other risky behaviors occur because of the notion that teens believe they are invincible or have adolescent invulnerability. In addition, teen smoking can also be credited to sensation-seeking tendencies or better known as risky behaviors, in order to suffice a need to experience new things and curiosities. Adolescent invulnerability can be described through Elkinds (1967, 1978) theory of adolescent egocentrism in that as adolescents experience new things bodily, socially and developmentally, they begin to become self-focused and erroneously assume that they are the center of not just their thoughts, but of others. Elkind also believed that invulnerability is a by-product of cognitive development and a child/adolescent can overcome a certain type of egocentrism at each stage of development with the most important being that of formal operations and being able to think in the abstract.In contrast to Elkin, Lapsely does not follow the Piagetian perspective and instead adopts Bloss (1962) theory of identity development that states that imaginary-audience and personal fable constructs are a coping mechanism for adolescents as they struggle to mature as independent individuals while also trying to deal with the psychological separation from their parents. The adolescents imaginary audience is there to help them with expressing anxiety regarding finding their new self and individuation as well as losing their former dependency on their parents.Despite which theory you look at, Piaget or Blos, it is assumed that risky behavior in adolescents, such as smoking, can be based on their egocentric tendencies and as a coping mechanism to not only deal with the separation from their parents, but to also express their independence. In addition to their egocentrism, an adolescents unique invulnerability may be askew as they perceive and underestimate their own risk due to negative events and life choices when related to the risk that they assign to other people (Perloff, 1987; Weinsten, 1980).As for sensation-seeking tendencies in adolescents, many of these behaviors are based on the idea that adolescents are bored and want to seek new varied experiences as well as the idea that humans have an optimal level of stimulation. According to Zuckerman (1978), these sensation-seeking adolescents are seeking out novel experiences so that they can reach optimal levels of arousal and will continue to seek out these experiences until their stimulation needs are satisfied. Through his studies, Zuckerman found that sensation-seeking decreases with age is more typical amongst males than females and is related to multiple behaviors such as risky sexual activities and drug and alcohol use.HypothesesThis articles explores tobacco use, specifically cigarette smoking amongst teens through the perceptive of Vartanian by simultaneously looking into adolescent egocentrism and sensation seeking as casual dimensions of adolescent risk taking (577). The study makes use of two research ideas by attempting to capture the feelings of invulnerability by measuring the participants perceptions of risk as well as the Adolescent Egocentrism Scale (AES). In addition, this article explores risk perceptions of the participants through three groups that include non-smokers, those who have tried smoking and regular smokers. An effort is being made to demonstrate that there may be two types of nonsmokers: those that are teetotalers and those that have experimented with smoking and their perceptions toward smoking risks.Comment by Amelia Davis: You only need a page # if you quote the article. This study also seeks to understand the relation between adolescent egocentrism and sensation seeking. This relationship will be measured through the testing of adolescents through the AES, risk perceptions and unique invulnerability and how these are expected to relate to each other empirically.MethodologyParticipantsThe participants of the study consisted of 215 high school students, 52% male and 48% female, ranging in age from 14 to 18 with a mean age of 15.91. As in previous studies on this same topic, the researcher decided to follow precedent and collected data from a high school in a medium-sized city in the Pacific Northwest where the students are predominantly white and live in a middle-class neighborhood. For this particular study, 223 surveys were administered however eight were excluded due to missing data. As a result of the 215 students who were included in the analysis, 77% were white.Comment by Amelia Davis: Though not explicitly mentioned by the researchers, what do you think the sampling procedure used here was?InstrumentsFor each of the four topics being examined, a different method of gathering results was administered. Adolescent egocentrism: the measurement tool was that of the AES, developed by Enright and colleagues and consists of three five-item subscales. The items being addressed were that of the imaginary audience, personal fable and self-focus. Within each of these items, participants were asked to rate each statement according to importance on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1= not important and 5 = very important, with the scores being calculated by summing the five items for each subscale. Risk perceptions: each participant was asked three single-item questions that addressed the participants own evaluation of the risks of smoking. The first question was, To what extent to you believe you are at risk of getting addicted to cigarettes? with a scale of 1= very low risk and 7 = to very high risk. The second and third questions pertained to the participants unique invulnerability. Question two asked participants, To what extend do you believe you are at risk of endangering your health because of cigarette smoking? with a scale of 1 = very low risk and 7 = to very high risk. And question three asked, If some other person your age smoke cigarettes, to what extent do you believe that he or she would risk his or her health? with a reversed score scale of 1 = very much at risk and 7 = not at all at risk. A participants unique invulnerability score was calculated by subtracting each participants score on question two by the score on the third question. When this calculation was negative, the unique invulnerability score indicated that those participants who smoked viewed others at a higher level of risk due to smoking than themselves. When evaluating personal risk and unique invulnerability, measurements and scores were only used for those participants who claimed they currently smokes or those who said they had tried smoking. In addition, a risk measure was taken for all participants that asked them to estimate the percentage of people their own age who smoke cigarettes on a scale of 0% to 100%. This added measure was based on the idea that sometimes, people do away with concerns about negative outcomes or behavior by making the concern and behavior seem more common. Sensation seeking: to evaluate the participants, Zuckermans (1979) 40-item Form V Sensation Seeking Scale (SSS) was used. This form is comprised of four 10-item subscales that include Thrill and Adventure Seeking (TAS), Experience Seeking (ES), Disinhibition (Dis) and Boredom Susceptibility (BS) subscales. To determine the score of each subscale, the number of responses that indicate sensation were counted. Smoking behavior: to indicate a participants smoking behavior, each participant was asked if they had ever smoked in their lifetime, and if they had, to what frequency. The frequency of smoking was based on the past 12 month and was measured as 1 = never, 2 = once or twice, 3 = sometimes, 4 = often and 5 = frequently.Design and ProceduresDuring their health class, students could voluntarily complete the self-administered questionnaire titled, You and Your Opinions about Cigarette Smoking. The participants were informed that the survey was anonymous and confidential and it addressed topics on adolescent egocentrism, sensation seeking, risk perceptions and questions regarding smoking behavior. This questionnaire or survey used a cross-sectional method to evaluate and compare the attitudes and practices of the adolescent who do or do not smoke cigarettes. Comment by Amelia Davis: What kind of research design do you think this was? How about the independent and dependent variables?ResultsIn exploring the relationship between adolescent egocentrism, risk perception and sensation seeking, the sex of the participants was also considered through the use MANOVA. In using MANOVA to test for differences between smoking and the sex of the participants, diagnostics showed that the data violated assumptions of multivariate and the eight outliers were omitted to solve the problem. The analysis tested for main effects between smoking level and sex of the participants. The study found that egocentrism is unrelated to smoking behavior. However, the univariate ANOVA indicated that there were differences in the sexes and showed that females show higher mean levels of personal fable and self focus with.To understand risk perceptions of the participants, a correlation analysis using MANOVA was run to indicate the correlation of variable on two of the three single-item risk perception scales. The third variable, which was the percentage of peers who smoke, was analyzed through the use of ANOVA. In opposition to what the expectation was, participants who smoked more frequently ranked themselves at a higher risk of addiction and the lower they scored in the area of unique invulnerability. When analyzing risk perceptions, sex was not a significant factor.When analyzing the variable of sensation seeking, these scores were examined across levels of smoking and sex via MANOVA and only for the main effects. What was found was what was expected, that males would show higher levels of sensation seeking scores when related to females. This analysis also proved consistent with the hypothesis that sensation-seeking tendencies would rise as smoking experience increased (Frankenberger, 2011, p. 585).Comment by Amelia Davis: This is how a direct quote less than 40 words should be cited. The final analysis in this study was if adolescent egocentrism, sensation seeking and risk perceptions are related. Some relations did emerge when the sample was divided into levels of smoking DiscussionWhen applying Elkind and Lapsleys theories of adolescent egocentrism to the concept of adolescent smoking behaviors, analysis did not indicate a strong difference in personal fable between adolescent nonsmokers, those who had tried smoking and are smokers. However, there is a possible indication that personal fable may play a role in adolescents perception of risk. Nonsmoking adolescents with higher levels as well as lower levels of egocentrism and experience seeking believed that more of their peers smoked. In comparison, adolescents with high fable perceptions who had tried smoking perceived lower levels of risk addiction. According to the study, this may lead to the idea that those who have tried smoking either believe that they are invulnerable to addiction or that they have rejected smoking as a result of having tired the behavior. On the opposite side, there was no relation between egocentrism and risk in regular smokers. It is believed that this result was caused by the fact that frequent smokers understanding the risks of their behaviors and that they reevaluate the risk more realistically. When looking at the effects of sensation seeking within this study, the SSS scores were as expected; the level of SSS scores rose as the level of smoking rose. It also indicated that males scored higher on SSS subscales than females. Based on these scores, it can be suggested that adolescents who do smoke regularly may do so out of curiosity, however, this study does not support the idea that sensation seeking and adolescent egocentrism are traits that develop at the same time in adolescents based on the correlation coefficients between the SSS and AES.After conducting this study, three hypotheses were developed for future research: Nonsmoking teens experiencing higher levels of egocentrism seek out social relationships with risk-taking peers who could eventually lead nonsmokers to become smokers Teens who experiments with smoking may be more likely to try smoking again in the future is personal fable perceptions lead to maladaptive perception of immunity to risk Personal fable has little relation to risk perception post hoc that is, after a risky behavior has been adopted.(Frankenberger 2004, p. 587).Comment by Amelia Davis: goodReflectionOverall, Frankenberger did a thorough job of explaining the reasoning of her study as well as providing sufficient background information in the literature review. In giving details about previous theories and studies conducted, I was able to understand why Frankenberger conducted the study as she did. However, I do think that the study could have explored more hypotheses that had not already been proven through other studies. Many of Frankenbergers data and analysis proved previous theories and well as brought on many new hypotheses. Also, it would help to be more specific on the survey items that pertain to an adolescents smoking behaviors over the past twelve months. Each participant is going to have a different perception of sometimes and frequently, and these items should be more clearly defined to aid in the validity of the survey. Comment by Amelia Davis: See APA format guidelines regarding when to spell out words and when to use numerals.Frankenbergers choice to keep with previous studies (white adolescents from middle class families) in this area is interesting and very predictable. It is as though she choose the safe choice for the study and her results matched. If the study had reached out to a larger and even more diversified sample, would the results have stayed the same or would new finding change our perception of adolescents smoking tendencies? Also, since Frankenberger seems to put more emphasis on adolescents perception of risk associated with smoking, I think that this study would have been more beneficial if it had focused more on this particular area. I believe that the methods used in the study would still pertain, but a reevaluation of the original hypothesis would need to take place. I find Frankenbergers study to be on an interesting topic for those in a health related profession, as well as for teachers of high school students, however, it seems like a repeat of previous studies. If Frankenberger had designated the audience for her study, I think that this would have help in focusing this study on more pertinent topics to help health professionals understand the reasoning behind why adolescents begin smoking in the first place. This would then aid them in developing anti-smoking campaigns as well as knowing what age to present these campaigns. In order to obtain this type of information, it may be useful to perform more longitudinal survey designs than cross-sectional. In this fashion, the study could monitor students through a cohort study or a panel study beginning in the ninth grade and continuing through to the students senior year.Comment by Amelia Davis: Good observation.

ReferencesFrankenberger, K. D. (2004). Adolescent egocentrism, risk perception, and sensation seeking among smoking and nonsmoking youth. Journal of Adolescent Research, 19 (5), 576 590. doi: 10.1177/0743558403260004

Jessica, You have done a nice job with this critique. You have highlighted the main elements that we need to understand in order to evaluate this type of research. I would like to have seen you try to name the sampling technique used, the research design, as well as the independent and dependent variables. You did a nice job including your own reflections, which is an important aspect of critiques. Please note the APA changes I made and be sure to use those in your future papers. If you have questions, please let me know.14/15 points