The Adolescent Perceived Costs and Benefits Scale for Sexual Intercourse<\/strong> is an influential psychometric instrument developed by Stephen A. Small<\/a>, Susan B. Silverberg, and Don Kerns (1993) to assess subjective cognitive appraisals regarding nonmarital adolescent sexual activity. Grounded in subjective expected utility theory<\/a>, social cognitive theory<\/a>, and adolescent decision-making models, the instrument operationalizes youth not as passive agents driven solely by biological impulses or peer pressure, but as rational cognitive decision-makers who weigh anticipated positive and negative consequences. The assessment comprises two independent, psychometrically robust subscales of 10 items each: the Perceived Costs Subscale<\/em> (measuring anticipated deterrents including pregnancy, sexually transmitted infections, parental disapproval, moral conflict, and compromised educational aspirations) and the Perceived Benefits Subscale<\/em> (measuring anticipated rewards including physical pleasure, emotional validation, peer conformity, perceived maturity, and affect regulation).<\/p>\n Each item is rated on a 4-point Likert-type scale<\/a> (ranging from 0 to 3), generating separate composite scores from 0 to 30 for each dimension. Psychometric evaluations across diverse adolescent samples (including a primary validation cohort of N<\/em> = 2,444 secondary school students) demonstrate excellent internal consistency, with Cronbach’s alpha<\/a> reaching .86 for both the Perceived Costs and Perceived Benefits subscales. Test-retest reliability across a two-week interval yielded coefficients of .70 for perceived costs and .65 for perceived benefits in a sample of 124 adolescents. The scale displays strong criterion-related and construct validity, differentiating sexually active adolescents from their non-active peers, predicting contraceptive regularity, and capturing developmental shifts and gender differences across adolescence<\/span>.<\/p>\n Adolescent sexual behavior, perceived costs, perceived benefits, subjective expected utility, adolescent decision making, sexual debut, psychometrics, risk perception, health-compromising behavior, contraceptive consistency<\/p>\n The scale was conceptualized, developed, and empirically validated by:<\/p>\n During the early 1990s, public health, developmental psychology, and sociomedical research frequently framed adolescent sexual activity through deficit-oriented and pathology-focused paradigms. Early sexual debut was primarily analyzed as a manifestation of delinquency, inadequate impulse control, deviant peer contagion, or broken family dynamics. While these perspectives identified critical sociological correlates, they frequently neglected the internal cognitive calculus and subjective agency of the adolescent. Stephen A. Small and colleagues developed the Adolescent Perceived Costs and Benefits Scale for Sexual Intercourse<\/em> to address this conceptual omission, offering researchers and clinicians a standardized methodology to investigate adolescent sexual onset through an expectancy-value decision framework.<\/p>\n The central purpose of the scale is to quantify the subjective valence and cognitive importance that youth attach to the prospective outcomes of sexual intercourse. Rather than assuming that all adolescents harbor identical perceptions of risk or pursue uniform psychological incentives, the instrument recognizes that an individual’s behavioral trajectory is governed by their personal ratio of anticipated losses versus anticipated gains. The assessment has multiple core purposes across diverse contexts:<\/p>\n The scale operationalizes two primary, quasi-orthogonal cognitive dimensions: Perceived Costs<\/strong> and Perceived Benefits<\/strong>. Rather than viewing costs and benefits as polar ends of a single continuum, the theoretical architecture assumes that an individual can concurrently endorse high costs and high benefits, or conversely perceive low costs alongside low benefits. Each subscale captures an intricate constellation of psychosocial, interpersonal, emotional, and pragmatic considerations.<\/p>\n The Perceived Costs subscale measures the extent to which an adolescent believes that engaging in sexual intercourse will produce negative physical, psychological, social, or developmental outcomes. The ten items within this subscale encompass several distinct thematic domains:<\/p>\n The Perceived Benefits subscale assesses the perceived positive reinforcements, functional utilities, and psychosocial rewards that youth associate with sexual intercourse. The ten items span the following affective, developmental, and relational functions:<\/p>\n The structural design of the Adolescent Perceived Costs and Benefits Scale rests at the intersection of several landmark theoretical models in cognitive psychology, behavioral economics, and developmental psychopathology.<\/p>\n Rooted in neoclassical decision science (Edwards, 1954<\/a>; Feather, 1982), Subjective Expected Utility Theory<\/a> posits that when individuals are confronted with behavioral alternatives, they choose the course of action that maximizes subjective expected utility. Mathematically, this utility is a product of the subjective probability that an outcome will occur multiplied by the subjective value (valence) of that outcome. Small, Silverberg, and Kerns (1993) adapted this paradigm to adolescent developmental science, asserting that adolescents evaluate sexual initiation through an internal comparison of potential costs and benefits. When perceived benefits outweigh perceived costs, the cognitive probability of behavioral initiation escalates sharply.<\/p>\n Originally formulated by Rosenstock (1974) and expanded by Becker (1974)<\/a>, the Health Belief Model posits that health-compromising or health-protective actions are governed by perceptions of susceptibility to harm, the perceived severity of consequences, perceived benefits of preventative actions, and perceived barriers. The Perceived Costs subscale directly measures perceived severity and susceptibility regarding STIs, pregnancy, and educational derailment. Concurrently, the Perceived Benefits subscale measures the competing subjective payoffs that act as barriers to adopting abstinent or health-protective behaviors.<\/p>\n Under Albert Bandura’s<\/a> (1986) Social Cognitive Theory<\/a>, human agency operates through triadic reciprocal causation among cognitive factors, behavioral patterns, and environmental influences. A cornerstone of this theory is outcome expectancies<\/em>: beliefs concerning the probable consequences that behavior will yield. Outcome expectancies are divided into physical outcomes (sensory pleasure or disease), social outcomes (peer acceptance or parental disapproval), and self-evaluative outcomes (self-satisfaction or guilt). The 20 items of Small and colleagues’ scale map directly onto Bandura’s tripartite classification of outcome expectancies.<\/p>\n Richard Jessor and Shirley Jessor’s<\/a> (1977) Problem Behavior Theory<\/a> articulates that youth behaviors are driven by the dynamic balance between instigations (incentives, perceived value of nonconventionality) and controls (internalized personal beliefs, conventional values, and social controls). The perceived benefits subscale mirrors Jessor’s behavioral instigators, whereas the perceived costs subscale mirrors personal and social controls that maintain conventional behavior.<\/p>\n Empirical evaluations provide robust psychometric evidence for the construct, criterion-related, convergent, and discriminant validity of both subscales across multiple demographic cohorts (Small, 1991; Small et al., 1993; Small, 1996).<\/p>\n The scale effectively distinguishes adolescents based on their reported sexual intercourse status. In the primary validation study of 2,444 adolescents (Small, Silverberg, & Kerns, 1993<\/a>):<\/p>\n In congruence with developmental and evolutionary psychological models, marked gender differences emerged across both dimensions:<\/p>\n Cross-sectional analyses across grade levels revealed a complex interaction between age and sexual experience. For non-sexually active adolescents, perceived benefit scores remained stable across secondary school grades. However, among sexually active adolescents, perceived benefit scores declined significantly after the 9th grade. Small et al. (1993) proposed two explanations for this pattern:<\/p>\n In subsequent analyses using the Teen Assessment Project (TAP) data, Small (1996) investigated the behavioral correlates of the scale among sexually active teens:<\/p>\n The psychometric evaluation of the Adolescent Perceived Costs and Benefits Scale demonstrates sound internal consistency and temporal stability across diverse adolescent demographics.<\/p>\n In the primary empirical validation study involving a multi-county sample of 2,444 middle and high school students (Small, Silverberg, & Kerns, 1993<\/a>), internal reliability was calculated using Cronbach’s coefficient alpha<\/a>:<\/p>\n These coefficients exceed the standard .80 benchmark for psychometric adequacy in behavioral research, indicating high internal coherence among the constituent items without excessive redundancy.<\/p>\n Temporal stability was evaluated across a two-week test-retest interval in a subsample of 124 male and female secondary school students:<\/p>\n These stability coefficients indicate reliable longitudinal measurement while preserving sensitivity to developmental shifts, environmental interventions, and changing relationship statuses.<\/p>\n The empirical development of the scale included multi-stage qualitative item derivation followed by exploratory and confirmatory factor analytic procedures. Extensive interviews with diverse cohorts of adolescents generated the initial pool of behavioral rationales. Pilot testing and subsequent exploratory factor analyses (EFA) demonstrated that perceived costs and perceived benefits do not load as opposing poles of a single bipolar construct, but instead emerge as two distinct, quasi-orthogonal latent dimensions<\/strong>.<\/p>\n A two-factor solution provided optimal theoretical and empirical fit:<\/p>\n The low inter-factor correlation between the two subscales (typically ranging between r<\/em> = -.08 and r<\/em> = .05 depending on sample demographics) confirms their orthogonality. This factorial independence demonstrates that adolescent cost-benefit appraisals are dual-process cognitive evaluations: an adolescent may simultaneously recognize extreme risks while anticipating substantial rewards<\/span>.<\/p>\n (Note: When administered on machine-scorable forms, items may be presented with reverse code labels; scoring should be aligned so that higher numerical values consistently denote higher perceived costs or higher perceived benefits).<\/em>\n <\/li>\n The Adolescent Perceived Costs and Benefits Scale for Sexual Intercourse was developed in 1993 as part of the University of Wisconsin\u2013Madison Teen Assessment Project (TAP). The instrument was published in the peer-reviewed literature in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence<\/em> (Small, Silverberg, & Kerns, 1993<\/a>). The scale is made accessible for academic, clinical, non-profit, and public health research without commercial licensing fees, provided appropriate scholarly attribution and citation are maintained.<\/p>\n Researchers intending to adapt, translate, or incorporate the instrument into large-scale institutional assessments may correspond with the lead author:<\/p>\n Dr. Stephen A. Small<\/strong>Keywords<\/h2>\n
Authors<\/h2>\n
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sasmall@wisc.edu<\/code>.<\/li>\nPurpose<\/h2>\n
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Psychological Construct<\/h2>\n
1. Perceived Costs Dimension<\/h3>\n
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2. Perceived Benefits Dimension<\/h3>\n
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Theoretical Framework<\/h2>\n
1. Subjective Expected Utility (SEU) Theory<\/h3>\n
2. The Health Belief Model (HBM)<\/h3>\n
3. Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory<\/h3>\n
4. Jessor’s Problem Behavior Theory (PBT)<\/h3>\n
Validity<\/h2>\n
Criterion-Related and Known-Groups Validity<\/h3>\n
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Gender Differences in Valuation<\/h3>\n
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Developmental Divergence and Cognitive Recalibration<\/h3>\n
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Contraceptive Consistency and Relational Validity<\/h3>\n
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Reliability<\/h2>\n
Internal Consistency<\/h3>\n
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Test-Retest Stability<\/h3>\n
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Factor Analysis<\/h2>\n
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Instrument \/ Measurement Tool<\/h2>\n
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0<\/code> = Strongly Disagree<\/li>\n1<\/code> = Disagree<\/li>\n2<\/code> = Agree<\/li>\n3<\/code> = Strongly Agree<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n
Permissions & Fee and Test Year<\/h2>\n
\nDepartment of Human Development and Family Studies
\nSchool of Human Ecology, University of Wisconsin\u2013Madison
\n1430 Linden Drive, Madison, WI 53706, USA
\nEmail: sasmall@wisc.edu<\/code><\/p>\nReferences<\/h2>\n
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13. Items of the Scale (Questionnaire)<\/h2>\n