Buffering Effect of Parental Monitoring Knowledge and Parent-Adolescent Relationships on Consequences of Adolescent Substance Use

Abstract

When adolescents begin using substances, negative consequences are not always directly proportional to the amount used; heavy users may have few consequences whereas light users may have numerous consequences. This study examined how parental monitoring knowledge and parent-child relationship quality may serve as buffers against negative consequences when adolescents use substances. Self-report questionnaires were administered to a community sample of 200 healthy adolescents and their parents at two time points, one year apart. Results suggest that both parental monitoring knowledge and parent-child relationship quality serve as buffers against negative consequences of substance use – but only when adolescents report high levels of monitoring knowledge or strong parent-child relationship quality. Results suggests adolescent perceived parental monitoring knowledge and parent-child relationship quality each act independently to buffer adolescents against negative consequences of substance use over a one-year period.

The Effects of Parental Monitoring and Communication on Adolescent Substance Use and Risky Sexual Activity: A Systematic Review

“…Of the final twenty articles included in the study, thirteen used cross-sectional study designs [22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34] and seven had longitudinal study designs [35][36][37][38][39][40][41]. The majority of the studies (12/20) were conducted in the USA [22-26, 29, 31, 33, 34, 38, 40, 41].…”

“…Both male and female respondents participated in the studies, although the majority consisted of female respondents. However, one study consisted of an equal split in male/female adolescent respondents [38], while another study had only female caregiver respondents [26]. Four of the twenty studies sought a parent-child dyad for the sample [29,34,36,38,40], all of which were mother-child respondents even though both parents were recruited.…”

“…Three studies used The Network of Relationship Inventory (NRI) [22,38,41], which assessed adolescents' perception of their relationship with their parents/guardians. Amongst these three studies, the NRI was used in varied combination with the Parental Monitoring Scale [22,35,38], Alabama Parenting Questionnaire: Child Form and the Parental Control Scale [41], all instruments aimed at measuring adolescents' perceptions of the level of parental behaviour control or level of parental monitoring knowledge. Additionally Parental knowledge was assessed with the Parental Knowledge Questionnaire [36,37,39] as well as the 4 item Caregiving monitoring Measure [29].…”

“…Other tests used were the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT) [36], Drug Involvements Scale (DISA) [38], the University of Michigan Composite International Diagnostic Instrument (assesses problematic alcohol use) [40], Eysenck and Eysenck Inventory (assess risk taking) [40] and the Youth Health Risk Behaviour Inventory [29]. 1 Was the sampling method representative of the population intended to the study?…”

“…Fifteen of the twenty studies defined parenting practices [22,23,[28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39]41]. Parenting practice was also defined as parental monitoring or parental control.…”