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

说明(由申请者提供)：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，是早期吸毒、犯罪和危险性行为的重要风险因素(Crouter&Head，2002)。文献表明，父母监测可能是父母和青少年之间交易过程的一部分，并可能反映父母的行动，例如监督(例如，成年人在场观察青少年的活动)、父母引诱(例如，父母试图向青少年询问信息)和儿童披露(例如，青少年决定与其父母分享信息)。衡量问题使得很难确定哪些具体的父母和青少年行为是保护性的，父母和青少年的监测行为如何共同影响青少年的风险，监测战略在青春期如何变化，以及父母的监测和青少年披露与其他保护性育儿做法有何关系(Stattin，Kerr和Tilton-Weaver，正在出版中)。这项拟议的研究旨在加深我们对保护过程的理解，这一过程是父母监督与中学期间危险行为之间的联系的基础。利用潜伏期分析，该项目将确定独特的监测概况，并探索这些概况如何与预防青少年早期吸毒、犯罪和越轨同伴交往有关。具体目的是(1)识别具有独特监控特征的家庭的潜在类别，探索这些类别在孩子的性别上是否相同，并调查青少年危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类别的成员资格，以及(2)模拟中学期间监控潜在类别成员的稳定性和变化，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。这项研究的数据来自Prosper项目，这是一个由NIDA资助的大规模药物使用预防有效性试验，在两个州的小城镇和农村社区进行。数据将包括母亲和青少年从六年级到九年级报告的活动监测措施。中学期间的监测过程对于预防可能特别重要，因为早期危险行为的启动与后来的严重反社会行为和成人药物滥用有关(Grant&Dawson，1997；Dewit等人，2000；Nagin&Tremblay，2001)。确定防止青少年早期使用药物的监测活动的具体组合可能有助于实地细化以家庭为基础的预防方案的变化目标，从而提高此类方案的效力。

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.