3. Parent and Peer Effects on Adolescent Health Behavior

Family characteristics and health behaviours of adolescents and families

“…Adolescence is often a period of experimentation with behaviour that adversely affects health, including smoking, alcohol use, lack of exercise, inadequate sleeping and poor eating habits (Hansell and Mechanic, 1990). If this behaviour is continued into adulthood, it may be considered as a risk-factor for ill-health, especially for some specific, lifethreatening diseases (Pulkkinen, 1990;Vingerhoets, Croon, Jeninga and Menges, 1990).…”

“…If this behaviour is continued into adulthood, it may be considered as a risk-factor for ill-health, especially for some specific, lifethreatening diseases (Pulkkinen, 1990;Vingerhoets, Croon, Jeninga and Menges, 1990). Evidence exists that unhealthy behaviour among adolescents has a good chance of resulting in the establishment of permanent habits (Hansell and Mechanic, 1990;Hurrelmann and Lijsel, 1990). Increasingly efforts are being made to promote healthy behaviour.…”

“…These studies suggest that health behaviour is influenced more by the 786 1. DE BOURDEAUDHUU AND P. VAN OOST general social context that underlies daily routines, than by the specific motivation of being healthy (Hansell and Mechanic, 1990). It is argued that considering social contexts in health promotion intervention could result in health behaviour being more resistant to change (Zimmerman and Connor, 1989).…”

“…Instead of merely borrowing concepts from the individual-based social cognitive theories to study the influence of family dimensions on smoking, alcohol use, eating behaviour, physical activity, etc., specific research is required to investigate the usefulness of the family concepts referred to above as determinants of health behaviour in adolescents and other family members. Hansell and Mechanic (1990) investigated parental and peer effects and hypothesised that more general family characteristics form the basis of adolescent health behaviours. They found that parental behaviour had no effect through modelling, encouragement, and support.…”

“…The two studies show that more general family characteristics could be found to be influencing a wide range of health behaviours, which could be very useful for health promotion. It would be possible to design a single intervention resulting in many kinds of health behaviours by adolescents (Hansell and Mechanic, 1990).…”