Trends of Parent–Adolescent Drug Talk Styles in Early Adolescence

Abstract

The present study seeks to understand how parents as prevention agents approach substance use prevention messages during the period of early adolescence. Students (N = 410) in a drug prevention trial completed surveys from 7th to 9th grade. Using longitudinal data, a series of latent transition analyses was conducted to identify major trends of parent-adolescent drug talk styles (i.e., never talked, situated direct, ongoing direct, situated indirect, and ongoing indirect) in control and treatment conditions. Findings demonstrate a developmental trend in drug talk styles toward a situated style of talk as youth transitioned from 7th grade to 9th grade. Findings also show that even though the drug prevention trial did not specifically target parental communication, parents in the treatment condition provide more ongoing substance use prevention messages to their adolescent children than do parents in the control condition. The present study discusses relevant developmental issues, potential intervention effects, and future research directions for communication research in substance use prevention.

Investigation of college student smoking perceptions, behaviors and communication about smoking with smoking friends and family

“…It is evident that communication can vary depending on different substances and the content of communication changes over time for adolescents. The present study extends the previous research by investigating contents of college students' communication with smoking friends and family members (Shin et al, 2019b;Kam and Miller-Day, 2017). Thus, we propose two research questions:…”

“…Similarly, a number of studies have highlighted the importance of family communication for substance use prevention. For example, empirical evidence shows protective effects of parent-child communication about substance use on adolescent and college student substance use behavior (Miller-Day, 2008;Kelly et al, 2002;Shin et al, 2019b). While a majority of prior studies focus on family as anti-substance-use socialization agents to prevent drinking and smoking behavior, less attention is given to investigate the relationships between having smoking family member and college students' perceptions of smoking and smoking behaviors (Choi et al, 2017;Shin et al, 2016Shin et al, , 2019a) An exceptional study discovers the direct association between parents' conversation about the negative consequences of their own past substance use and adolescent perceptions of parental approval on substance use (Kam and Middleton, 2013).…”

Pattern of lifestyle behaviors and associated risk of being bullied at schools: A latent class analysis of 25,379 adolescents in Jiangsu Province of China

“…This finding was consistent with previous studies, which reported a similar cluster of these targeted behaviors in adolescents (Hutchesson et al, 2021). We speculate that lack of parental guidance on medication use (Shin et al, 2019), advantageous socioeconomic status (Hall et al, 2009), and stressful social environments (Copeland‐Linder et al, 2011), might play a role in the clustering of these behaviors, although little consensus exists. Despite that the variable "no fruit consumption" was not useful to differentiate the classes in the current setting, it would be prudent to keep it on target according to one of the recent findings (Okada et al, 2022).…”