An evaluation of the stability of perceptions and frequency of adolescent risk-taking over time and across samples

The Adolescent Risk-Taking Questionnaire (ARQ) was designed to provide a standard measure of perceptions of risk and frequency of engaging in risky behaviour. The stability of the ARQ across cohorts and over time was assessed via confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) using data from 4112 Australian adolescents participating in a 12-month, three-wave longitudinal study. CFA of the perception scale revealed none of three models tested fit reliably across the waves. This suggests adolescent risk perceptions change over short periods of time. Although limited due to extreme non-normality, CFA of the frequency scale also indicated the original factor structure was inappropriate. These results propose adolescent risk-taking behaviour may evolve rapidly enough to warrant calibrating standard measures to each sample.