Interrelationships among certain measures of growth and maturation rate in boys during adolescence.

Relationships among ages at attaining 17 or 21 indices of maturity were considered in a longitudinal sample of 177 Polish boys examined at annual intervals from 1961 to 1972. Maturity indicators included ages at peak velocity for stature, sitting height, leg length and weight; ages at attaining 80%, 90%, 95% and 99% of adult stature; ages at attaining the median skeletal maturity scores (TW-2) characteristic of chronological ages 11, 12, 13, 14, and 15 years; and ages at attaining stages II and IV of genital and public hair development. Age at initiation of the stature spurt (take-off) and ages at eruption of 14, 20 and 26 permanent teeth were ascertained for only 111 boys. All intercorrelations among the developmental indicators were positive. Ordering the correlation matrix gave three clusters: (1) a large central group including age at take-off and ages at all peak velocities, at genital and pubic hair stages II and IV, at attaining 90%, 95% and 99% of adult stature, and at the later stages of skeletal maturity; (2) indices of the tempo of maturation during prepubertal and/or early pubertal stages; and (3) ages at attaining a given number of permanent teeth. Results of a principal components analysis of the ages indicated two principal components, the first accounting for about 77% of the sample variance and the second for about 12%. The first principal component is apparently a general maturity factor, while the second apparently relates to the rate of skeletal maturity during pre-adolescence.