Parental Monitoring and Early Adolescent Risky Behavior: A Latent Class Approach

描述（由申请人提供）：研究一致认为父母监控，即父母跟踪青少年活动和地点的程度，是早期药物使用、犯罪和危险性行为的重要风险因素（Crouter & Head, 2002）。文献表明，父母监控可能是父母与青少年之间交易过程的一部分，可能反映父母的行为，如监督（例如，成年人在场观察青少年的活动），父母的恳求（例如，父母试图向青少年询问信息）和儿童披露（例如，青少年决定与父母分享信息）。测量问题使得难以确定哪些具体的父母和青少年行为是保护性的，父母和青少年监测行为如何共同影响青少年风险，监测策略如何在青春期变化，以及父母监测和青少年披露如何与其他保护性育儿实践相关（Stattin, Kerr, & Tilton-Weaver，出版）。本研究旨在加深我们对保护过程的理解，这一保护过程是家长监控与中学生危险行为之间联系的基础。利用潜在类别分析，该项目将确定监测的独特概况，并探索这些概况如何与预防青少年早期药物使用，犯罪和越轨同伴关联相关联。具体目标是：(1)识别具有独特监测概况的潜在家庭类别，探索这些类别是否在儿童的性别中相同；研究青少年风险行为和父母教养的其他方面如何预测中学入学时这些潜在班级的成员资格。(2)建立中学时期监测潜在班级成员资格的稳定性和变化模型，以及青少年风险行为和亲子关系的情感质量如何预测这些转变。该研究的数据来自PROSPER项目，该项目由NIDA资助，在两个州的小城镇和农村社区进行药物使用预防的大规模有效性试验。数据将包括六年级至九年级的母亲和青少年报告的监测活动措施。中学时期的监测过程对于预防尤为重要，因为早期开始的危险行为与后来严重的反社会行为和成人药物滥用有关（Grant & Dawson, 1997; Dewit et al., 2000; Nagin & Tremblay, 2001）。确定预防青少年早期药物使用的监测活动的具体组合可能有助于该领域细化以家庭为基础的预防项目的变化目标，从而提高此类项目的效力。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Research has consistently identified parental monitoring, the extent to which a parent tracks the activities and location of their youth, as an important risk factor for early substance use, delinquency and risky sexual behavior (Crouter & Head, 2002). The literature suggests that parental monitoring may be part of a transactional process between parents and youth and may reflect parent actions such as supervision (e.g., an adult is present to observe youth activities), parental solicitation (e.g., parent attempts to ask youth for information) and child disclosure (e.g., youth decisions to share information with their parents). Measurement issues have made it difficult to identify which specific parent and youth actions are protective, how parent and youth monitoring behaviors work together to influence youth risk, how monitoring strategies change over adolescence, and how parental monitoring and youth disclosure are related to other protective parenting practices (Stattin, Kerr, & Tilton-Weaver, in press). The proposed study aims to further our understanding of the protective process that underlies the association between parental monitoring and risky behavior during middle school. Using latent class analysis, this project will identify unique profiles of monitoring and explore how these profiles are associated with the prevention of early adolescent substance use, delinquency, and deviant peer associations. Specific aims are to (1) Identify latent classes of families who have unique monitoring profiles, explore if these classes are the same across gender of the child, and investigate how youth risky behavior and other aspects of parenting predict membership in these latent classes at the entrance to middle school and (2) Model the stability and change of membership in monitoring latent classes over the middle school period and how youth risky behavior and the affective quality of the parent-child relationship may predict these transitions. The data for the research are from the PROSPER project, a NIDA funded large-scale effectiveness trial of substance use prevention in small towns and rural communities in two states. Data will include measures of monitoring activities reported by mothers and youth from Grade 6 to Grade 9. The monitoring process during middle school may be particularly important for prevention, as early initiation of risky behavior has been linked to later severe antisocial behavior and adult substance abuse (Grant & Dawson, 1997; Dewit et al., 2000; Nagin & Tremblay, 2001). Identifying the specific combinations of monitoring activities that prevent early adolescent substance use may help the field refine the targets of change in family based prevention programs, thus enhancing the efficacy of such programs.