Adolescent Substance Use With Friends: Moderating and Mediating Effects of Parental Monitoring and Peer Activity Contexts

Abstract

The influence of using substances with friends on future individual use was examined in the context of parental monitoring rules and the ecology of peer activities. A one-year longitudinal study design included a combined sample of North Italian and French Canadian adolescents (N = 285, 53% girls, M = 14.25 years). Data analyses were conducted using structural equation modeling and multiple regression analyses. As expected, the covariation between parental monitoring and adolescent substance use was mediated by “co-use” with friends. Moreover, the relation between substance use with friends and individual substance use was moderated by parental monitoring rules and the peer activity context. Specifically, the relation between substance co-use with friends and individual substance use was stronger when the level of parental monitoring rules was low and when friends spent their time together primarily in unstructured contexts such as on the street or in park settings. These findings underline the importance of adults’ use of rules to monitor adolescents prone to substance use, and the role of context in facilitating or reducing peer influence.

The Effects of Parental Monitoring and Communication on Adolescent Substance Use and Risky Sexual Activity: A Systematic Review

“…Of the final twenty articles included in the study, thirteen used cross-sectional study designs [22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34] and seven had longitudinal study designs [35][36][37][38][39][40][41]. The majority of the studies (12/20) were conducted in the USA [22-26, 29, 31, 33, 34, 38, 40, 41].…”

“…The majority of the studies (12/20) were conducted in the USA [22-26, 29, 31, 33, 34, 38, 40, 41]. The remaining eight studies were conducted in Canada (3/20) [35,37,39], two studies in Slovakia [28,32], one study in Cyprus [36] and one was conducted in Scotland [27]. Both male and female respondents participated in the studies, although the majority consisted of female respondents.…”

“…Three studies used The Network of Relationship Inventory (NRI) [22,38,41], which assessed adolescents' perception of their relationship with their parents/guardians. Amongst these three studies, the NRI was used in varied combination with the Parental Monitoring Scale [22,35,38], Alabama Parenting Questionnaire: Child Form and the Parental Control Scale [41], all instruments aimed at measuring adolescents' perceptions of the level of parental behaviour control or level of parental monitoring knowledge. Additionally Parental knowledge was assessed with the Parental Knowledge Questionnaire [36,37,39] as well as the 4 item Caregiving monitoring Measure [29].…”

“…Fifteen of the twenty studies defined parenting practices [22,23,[28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39]41]. Parenting practice was also defined as parental monitoring or parental control.…”

“…Parenting practice was also defined as parental monitoring or parental control. Articles also defined parental monitoring as comprising of parental control [35,38]. Furthermore, two studies highlighted parental communication as a vital aspect of parenting practices highlighting the importance of not only the talking, but the frequency, quality and content of the communication between parent and child [29,30].…”