Risk taking behaviours among early adolescents in relation with morningness-eveningness and depressive symptoms

Pages: 388-390
Parampreet Kaur and Suninder Tung (Department of Psychology, Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar )

Entry into adolescence brings lot of internal and external changes and due to these changes an early adolescent is vulnerable to depressive feelings. There is also a new found shift in their internal circadian rhythms, which is towards eveningness from morning type. So, the present study was conducted to investigate the relation of morningness-eveningness and depressive symptoms with risk taking behaviours among early adolescents. For this purpose a sample of 218 students (boys=106, girls=112) of age 13-14 yrs was drawn from different Sr. Sec. Schools of Moga. To obtain the required data self assessment questionnaires i.e. Adolescent Risk Behaviour Questionnaire (ARQ), Beck Depression Inventory (BDI-II) and Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire (MEQ) were administered on the sample. From the results it was found that morningness-eveningness is significantly negatively correlated with risk taking behaviours and depressive symptoms are significantly positively correlated with risk behaviours. Further it was found that both morningness-eveningness (β= -.60, t= 10.8, p<.01) and depressive symptoms (β= .26, t= 4.7, p<.01) significantly predicted 64% variance (R2= .64, F= 190.7, P<.01) in risk taking behaviours in the selected sample.