Sex, Violence, and Drugs Among Latin American and Caribbean Adolescents: Do Engaged Parents Make a Difference?

Abstract

work is licensed under a Creative Commons IGO 3.0 AttributionNonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC-IGO BY-NC-ND 3.0 IGO) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/igo/ legalcode) and may be reproduced with attribution to the IDB and for any non-commercial purpose, as provided below. No derivative work is allowed.Any dispute related to the use of the works of the IDB that cannot be settled amicably shall be submitted to arbitration pursuant to the UNCITRAL rules. The use of the IDB's name for any purpose other than for attribution, and the use of IDB's logo shall be subject to a separate written license agreement between the IDB and the user and is not authorized as part of this CC-IGO license.Following a peer review process, and with previous written consent by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), a revised version of this work may also be reproduced in any academic journal, including those indexed by the American Economic Association's EconLit, provided that the IDB is credited and that the author(s) receive no income from the publication. Therefore, the restriction to receive income from such publication shall only extend to the publication's author(s). With regard to such restriction, in case of any inconsistency between the Creative Commons IGO 3.0 Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license and these statements, the latter shall prevail.Note that link provided above includes additional terms and conditions of the license. I) INTRODUCTIONIn this paper, we explore the relation between adolescents' health risk behaviors and parental engagement in 15 Caribbean and Latin American countries. The relation is examined through logit regressions, and the overall effect is estimated through meta-analysis.Adolescence is a time of many developmental challenges related to identity, autonomy, and sexuality. This period includes experimentation with perceived facets of adulthood. Many adolescents experiment with risk behaviors, such as delinquent, antisocial, and high-risk sexual behaviors. Adolescence is also a period in which these problem behaviors can become established patterns, thereby affecting well-being later in life. During this time, there is also a transformation in the parent-adolescent relationship. This study investigates whether parental engagement can be a significant predictor of risk behaviors of adolescents in Latin America and the Caribbean, as has been indicated in many studies of adolescents in developed countries.Furthermore, we aim to investigate any related differences between the Caribbean and Latin American countries.This paper has five sections. Section I introduces the paper. Section II presents a brief literature review on the adolescent-parent relationship and its influence on adolescent health risk behaviors. In section III, we describe the data, variables of interest, and research methods. In section IV, we present the results, and we end with a discussion of the findings in section V. II) ADOLESCENT HEALTH RISK BEHAVIORS: RISK AND PROTECTION FACTORS

The associations between bullying victimization and internalizing distress, suicidality, and substance use in Jamaican adolescents: The moderating role of parental involvement

“…The 3 items measuring parental involvement were averaged to form a parental involvement composite variable and the internal consistency of the parental involvement construct was .64. A prior research study using GSHS data (Ruprah et al, 2017) has demonstrated reliability and validity of the 3-item measure of parental involvement used in the current investigation. Ruprah, Sierra, and Sutton (2017) found that higher scores on parental involvement were associated with lower levels of risk behavior.…”

“…Alcohol use —“During the past 30 days, on how many days did you have at least one drink containing alcohol?” Response options were 1 = 0 days , 2 = 1 or 2 days , 3 = 3–5 days , 4 = 6–9 days , 5 = 10–19 days , 6 = 20–29 days , and 7 = all 30 days . Several existing studies using GSHS data support the validity of the single-item measures of tobacco and alcohol use (Banzer et al, 2017; Mazaba et al, 2017; Mouhanna et al, 2017; Murshid, 2017; Peltzer & Pengpid, 2017a, 2017b; Ruprah et al, 2017; Ziaei et al, 2017). For example, Banzer et al (2017) found significant positive associations between adolescents’ tobacco use and anxiety, hyperactivity, conduct problems, self-injurious behaviors, previous suicide attempts, alcohol and drug use, and family problems.…”

“…“During the past 12 months, how many times did you actually attempt suicide?” Response options were 1 = 0 times , 2 = 1 time , 3 = 2 or 3 times , 4 = 4 or 5 times , and 5 = 6 or more times. The validity of these single-item measures of suicidal thoughts and behavior has been established in prior work using GSHS survey data (Badr, 2017; Klomek et al, 2016; Mazaba et al, 2017; Peltzer & Pengpid, 2017a, 2017b; Ruprah, Sierra, & Sutton, 2017; Ziaei et al, 2017). For example, Ziaei et al (2017) found that suicidal ideation was positively associated with worrying, ability to focus on homework, current cigarette use, thoughts about using alcohol or other drugs, being bullied, and being sexually abused.…”

Restoring paradise in the Caribbean: combatting violence with numbers

“…Engaged parents were associated with significantly reduced problem behaviours among adolescents in the Caribbean and Latin America (Ruprah, Sierra, and Sutton 2016). While the Caribbean had fewer engaged parents than Latin America, and the impact of good parenting was weaker in the Caribbean, engaged parenting made a significant difference for both groups of countries (Appendix 5.1).…”

“…A recent IDB study using data from the GSHS investigated the prevalence of five problem behaviours among adolescents ages 13-17-sexual intercourse, drinking, drug use, fighting, and getting in trouble after drinking-in Latin America and the Caribbean (Ruprah, Sierra, and Sutton 2016). Figure 5.4 shows that levels of problem behaviours were generally higher in the Caribbean countries than in the Latin American countries surveyed.…”