Psychology Methods Hour: On puberty and its measurement: The case of the ABCD Study

Puberty matters for adolescent (and adult) wellbeing. Owing to its size, longitudinal design, and scientific influence, the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study has significant potential to advance understanding of puberty’s antecedents, mechanisms, and consequences. Unfortunately, current practices undermine that potential and may obfuscate or misrepresent the correlates of pubertal development. Following a puberty primer, this presentation will detail one problematic practice: the use of a categorical composite score to represent pubertal status. This problem will be detailed through a systemic review of 190 empirical reports that used puberty data from the ABCD Study published through December 2024, and through analyses using the categorical composite score and an alternative continuous composite score. The presentation will close with a discussion about best practices in using secondary and open data as well as ways to maximize the potential of ABCD to address open questions about the role of puberty in adolescent development.