Puberty in Boys: A Complex Phenomenon Unwind from Pakistan

Abstract

In order to explore puberty stages in teenage boys, the indices for boys in the Pubertal Development Scale (PDS, Carskadon & Acebo, 1993) were adapted to Urdu and 1344 participants aged 10-18 years were recruited from the different schools of Lahore, through convenient sampling. A four factor model fit with satisfactory internal consistency of items and inert-factor correlations was reported. The pubertal category scores have overlapping categories of pubertal stages that are comparable to the gold standard of Tanners stages. The findings suggest that the assessment of secondary sexual characteristics through PDS is quite subjective to rate for the
children especially when the target population has low level of awareness and knowledge about them. Implications are discussed in the light of the findings.