Mjerenje pubertalnoga sazrijevanja u istraživanjima razvoja adolescenata
Measuring Puberal Maturation in Research on Adelescent Development

Summary/Abstract: During the last several decades, various aspects of adolescents' experiences and behaviors have been intensively examined. However, the role of pubertal maturation – central and most salient developmental change at transition from childhood to adulthood – is surprisingly scarcely examined within the research of other aspects of adolescents' functioning and development. Furthermore, researchers are prone to base their conclusions about the level of pubertal development on the data on child’s chronological age. Due to pronounced inter-individual differences in onset of puberty and the rate of pubertal development, such inferring has serious flaws. One of the reasons for omitting measures of puberty in research on adolescents is the difficulty to measure pubertal development. With few exceptions, measures of pubertal development haven’t been used so far in psychological and other non-medical research in Croatia. The aim of this article is to review various measures of pubertal maturation, with the emphasis on those adequate for application beyond medical and clinical context, in order to encourage researchers to use them and, in that way, contribute to better understanding of adolescents’ behavior and development.

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