The present study pairs narrative meaning-making with topic modeling to richly capture how girls choose to describe their experiences of change during puberty and to establish how these narratives map onto depressive symptoms. Participants (N = 125 girls; M_age = 11.61 years; 90.40% White) wrote about changes during puberty and reported their level of pubertal development, relationships, and mood. The relationship between meaning-making and depressive symptoms was negatively moderated by early pubertal timing (d = .31) and positively moderated by more advanced pubertal status (d = .36). Exploratory analyses indicated that writing proportionally more about menstruation-related changes had a small effect on subsequent depressive symptoms (f² = .12). Results provide a conceptual and methodological update to decades-old, landmark qualitative findings on girls' perceptions and assessments of experiences at puberty.

中文翻译：

---

用他们自己的话说：在女孩的青春期经历中寻找意义

本研究将叙事意义构建与主题建模相结合，以丰富地捕捉女孩如何选择描述她们在青春期的变化经历，并确定这些叙事如何映射到抑郁症状。参与者（N  = 125 名女孩；M_年龄 = 11.61 岁；90.40% 为白人）写下了青春期的变化，并报告了她们的青春期发育水平、人际关系和情绪。意义建构与抑郁症状之间的关系受到青春期提前时间的负面调节 ( d  = .31)，并受到更晚的青春期状态的积极调节 ( d = .36）。探索性分析表明，更多地写与月经相关的变化对随后的抑郁症状影响很小 ( f ²  = .12)。结果为数十年前关于女孩对青春期经历的看法和评估的具有里程碑意义的定性研究结果提供了概念和方法上的更新。