Link Between Monitoring Behavior and Adolescent Adjustment: An Analysis of Direct and Indirect Effects

Abstract

The purpose of the current investigation was to explore whether monitoring behavior (i.e., parental solicitation, child disclosure, and parental involvement) was directly and indirectly (via parental knowledge and parent-youth openness) related to adolescent adjustment (i.e., antisocial behavior, substance use, and school grades). The sample consisted of 206 families with adolescents (ages 10–18 years) from predominantly low-income, high-risk neighborhoods. Monitoring behavior (parent reports), parental knowledge and parent-youth openness (youth reports), and adolescent adjustment (parent and youth reports) were all based on questionnaire data collected during a laboratory assessment. Results showed that when the monitoring behavior factors were examined simultaneously, only child disclosure was significantly and inversely related to youth antisocial behavior. In contrast, only parental involvement was significantly associated with less substance use. Moreover, school grades were significantly and incrementally predicted by both child disclosure and parental involvement. Parental solicitation was not significantly related to any of the adolescent outcomes. The findings also demonstrated evidence of indirect effects (via parental knowledge) in the link between monitoring behavior and adolescent adjustment. Implications regarding the socialization process during adolescence are discussed.

Structural relations between sources of parental knowledge, feelings of being overly controlled and risk behaviors in early adolescence

“…While Keijsers et al (2010) show that solicitation is positively associated to parental knowledge, other studies with students in early and mid-adolescence STRUCTURAL RELATIONS BETWEEN SOURCES OF PARENTAL KNOWLEDGE found that it did not (Criss et al, 2015;Kerr et al, 2010). The current findings indicate that parental solicitation does not contribute to parental knowledge.…”

“…Researchers tend to study only one type of adolescent behavior in relation to parental knowledge (Stavrinides et al, 2010). But, the associations between parental knowledge and its sources and adolescent adjustment may differ depending on the risk behavior that is studied (Criss et al, 2015). In this study, we first examined the associations between parental knowledge and its sources, adolescent disclosure, parental control, and parental solicitation.…”

Direct and indirect links between peer factors and adolescent adjustment difficulties

“…The sample consisted of 206 families with adolescents who participated in the Family and Youth Development Project (Criss et al, 2015), a study of the predictors and outcomes of adolescent emotion regulation. Data were collected from both adolescents ( M age = 13.37 years, SD = 2.32, Age Range = 10–18 years; 51% female; 29.6% European American, 32% African American, 19.4% Latino American, 19% other ethnic groups) and their primary caregivers (83.3% biological mothers, 10.7% biological fathers, 2% grandparents, 4% other).…”

Parental Knowledge of Adolescents’ Online Content and Contact Risks

“…This error was consequential to the way in which parental monitoring tended to be operationalized, namely as what parents know about their child's daily whereabouts rather than what parents do to monitor their child's behavior. More recent studies conceptualize parental knowledge as resulting from monitoring activities, with some studies suggesting that the protective effect of parental monitoring runs entirely (Lippold et al 2014a) or partially (Criss et al 2015) through the amount of knowledge that monitoring generates. It should be noted, however, that a lack of conceptual clarity continues to blur the research field.…”