Transcript Number of Sex Partners in Past Twelve Months by Gender, China

The influence of parental monitoring and
parent-adolescent communication on Bahamian
adolescent risk involvement: A three-year
longitudinal examination
Bo Wang, Bonita Stanton, Xiaoming Li,
Lynette Deveaux, Veronica Koci
Prevention Research Center
Wayne State University School of Medicine
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Collaborators and Funding Support
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Funding: This project is supported by the National
Institute of Mental Health (R01MH069229).
Principal investigator: Bonita Stanton at Wayne State
University School of Medicine.
Collaboration institutes: the Bahamas Ministries of
Health and Education
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Background
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Numerous studies have documented the consistent link
between higher levels of parental monitoring and lower
levels of problem behaviors.
The association between parental monitoring and
problem behavior has been brought into question.
Several studies have observed that the measures of
parental monitoring commonly used in the literature
assess parents’ knowledge about their adolescent’s
activities rather than active monitoring efforts by parents.
These studies suggest that parental monitoring can best
be conceptualized and measured through the domains of
parental knowledge, youth disclosure, parental
solicitation and parental control.
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Background
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Several studies have consistently found that youth
disclosure is an important predictor of delinquent
behavior (Keijsers et al., 2010; Kerr et al., 2010).
By contrast, findings regarding effects of parental
solicitation and control on adolescent risk behavior are
mixed (Laird et al., 2010).
Few studies addressed the facilitating role of the parentyouth communication in effective monitoring and most
focused on delinquent behavior without substance use
and sexual risk behaviors.
A majority of the existing studies focusing on parental
monitoring have been cross-sectional and thus lack the
perspective afforded through a longitudinal study
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Objective
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This study uses four waves of data from a three-year
longitudinal study to continue the investigation of the
components of “parental monitoring” and parent-youth
communication.
We first examine the association of parental knowledge,
youth disclosure, parental solicitation and control with risk
involvement through early to middle adolescence, before
and after controlling for parent-youth communication.
We then examine longitudinal relationships between the
four components of “parental monitoring” in early
adolescence, parent-adolescent open and problem
communication, and adolescent risk involvement in
middle adolescence.
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Methods
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Study site:
 The island of New Providence, the Bahamas. It houses
65% of the entire population and 86% of HIV infected
individuals.
Participants:
 913 grade-six students from 10 government elementary
schools in New Providence.
 The mean age of youth at baseline was 10.4 years
(range 10 to14 years) and 55.8% were females. Ninetynine percent of youth are of African descent.
 The follow-up rate was 89% at 12 months, 86% at 24
months, and 83% at 36 months of post-intervention.
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Measures
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Delinquency, substance use and sexual risk behaviors.
Youth’s involvement in problem behaviors was assessed
using the Bahamian Youth Health Risk Behavioral
Inventory. A composite score was computed for
adolescent delinquency (ranging 0-4), substance use (0-5),
and sexual risk (0-4).
Parent-youth communications. It was measured by the
Parent-Adolescent Communication Scale.
 Open communication. 10 items measure the degree of
openness in parent-youth communication.
 problem communication. 10 items measure the extent
of problems in parent-youth communication.
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Measures
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Parental knowledge, youth disclosure, parental solicitation
and parental control. A validated eight-item parental
monitoring scale was employed to assess parental
knowledge and monitoring activities. The seven items
were assigned to four domains (one item deleted)
 Parental knowledge (2 items). “My parents/guardian
know where I am after school.”
 Youth disclosure (3 items). “I tell my parents/guardian
whom I’m going to be with before I go out.”
 Parental solicitation (1 item). “when I go out, my
parents/guardian ask me where I’m going.”
 Parental control (1 items). “when I go out, my parents/
guardian tell me what time I’m going to return.”
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Analysis
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Mixed-effects model. Given the hierarchical nature of our
data (students clustered within classes in 10 schools),
mixed effects regression analysis was conducted to
identify predictive factors for delinquency, substance use
and sexual risk behaviors.
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Path analysis was conducted on longitudinal data to
investigate long-term effects of parental knowledge, youth
disclosure, parental solicitation and control in early
adolescence (grade six/seven) on adolescent risk
involvement in middle adolescence (grade nine).
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Results
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Summary of results
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Results from mixed-effects models showed that parental
knowledge, youth disclosure, and parental control were
negatively associated with both delinquency and
substance use; parent-adolescent open and problem
communication (rather than parental knowledge, youth
disclosure, parental solicitation or parental control) were
associated with sexual risk behaviors.
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Results from path models further indicated that youth
disclosure was a significant longitudinal predictor of
reduced adolescent delinquency whereas parental control
during early adolescence predicted reduced substance use
in middle adolescence.
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Conclusion
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Parental knowledge, youth disclosure and parental
control differ in their impacts on substance use,
delinquency and sexual risk behaviors.
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Parent-adolescent problem communication has consistent
influence on all three types of adolescent risk behaviors.
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Future parental monitoring interventions should focus on
enhancing parents’ interpersonal communication skills
and emphasize the differences and importance of the
unique components of parental monitoring
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Limitations
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Adolescent problem behaviors relied on self-report. It is
possible that adolescents misreported or underreported
their risk behaviors (self-reporting bias).
The measures of parental knowledge, youth disclosure,
parental solicitation and control were extracted from a
previous commonly used construct of “parental
monitoring”.
Although these measures are not as comprehensive as the
measures used in several recent studies, the items used in
the present study are identical to some items used by Kerr
et al. (2010) and are considered as core items of the
constructs.
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Thank you!
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