This might again be a case of correlation rather than causation, but this new research from the University of Georgia looks at the life of students who date early already in middle school.

From the press release:

Orpinas followed a group of 624 students over a seven-year period from sixth to 12th grade. Each year, the group completed a survey indicating whether they had dated and reported the frequency of different behaviors, including the use of drugs and alcohol. Their teachers completed questionnaires about the students’ academic efforts. The Healthy Teens Longitudinal Study included schools from six school districts in northeast Georgia. Investigators used two indicators of students’ school success: high school dropout rates and yearly teacher-rated study skills. The results of the study were recently published in the Journal of Research on Adolescence.

“In our study, we found four distinct trajectories,” Orpinas said. “Some students never or hardly ever reported dating from middle to high school, and these students had consistently the best study skills according to their teachers. Other students dated infrequently in middle school but increased the frequency of dating in high school. We also saw a large number of students who reported dating since sixth grade.”

Of the early daters, a large portion of the study group—38 percent—reported dating at almost all measurement points throughout the study. The second at-risk segment, identified as “high middle school dating,” represented 22 percent of the sample. One hundred percent of these students dated in sixth grade.

“At all points in time, teachers rated the students who reported the lowest frequency of dating as having the best study skills and the students with the highest dating as having the worst study skills,” according to the journal article.

Study skills refer to behaviors that lead to academic success such as doing work for extra credit, being well organized, finishing homework, working hard and reading assigned chapters.

Children in these early dating groups were also twice as likely to use alcohol and drugs.

The researchers also see that this is rather a story of correlation than causation as Orpins says “A likely explanation for the worse educational performance of early daters is that these adolescents start dating early as part of an overall pattern of high-risk behaviors.”

Abstract of the research:

 This study identifies trajectories of dating from sixth to twelfth grade and describes the academic performance (teacher-rated study skills and high school dropout) and self-reported drug use associated with these trajectories, in a diverse sample randomly selected in sixth grade. Using a group-based, semiparametric procedure, we identified four dating trajectories: low (16%), increasing (24%), high middle school (22%), and frequent (38%). Students in these latter two groups had significantly worse study skills, were four times more likely to drop out of school, and reported twice as much alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana use than students in the low and increasing dating groups. This study highlights the diversity of dating trajectories and some of the risks associated with early dating.