Predicting Risk-Taking With and Without Substance Use: The Effects of Parental Monitoring, School Bonding, and Sports Participation

Abstract

Risk-taking is statistically normative during adolescence, yet is associated with adverse outcomes including substance use. The present study draws the distinction between protective factors (effective for those identified as high risk takers) and promotive factors (effective for all) against substance use, focusing on parental monitoring, school bonding, and sports participation. A total of 36,514 8th and 10th grade participants in the national Monitoring the Future study were included. Although parental monitoring was associated with lower alcohol and marijuana use among all adolescents (i.e., promotive effect), these effects were strongest among the highest risk takers (i.e., protective effect) and females. School bonding was associated with lower levels of both alcohol and marijuana use among all groups of adolescents, but these promotive effects were weak. Sports participation was associated with higher levels of alcohol use among all males and among 8th grade females who did not identify as high risk takers. Despite being a risk factor for alcohol use, sports participation did demonstrate a promotive effect against marijuana use among 10th grade females only, and especially so for high risk-taking females (i.e., protective effect). Overall, these findings suggest that of the three mechanisms studied, parental monitoring emerged as the most promising entry point for substance use prevention and intervention across groups, particularly for females and high risk-taking adolescents.

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].…”

“…Of the studies, nine used survey items as either part of their measuring tool or as the sole basis as their data collection tool [23,25,27,28,[30][31][32][33][34]. Three studies used The Network of Relationship Inventory (NRI) [22,38,41], which assessed adolescents' perception of their relationship with their parents/guardians.…”

“…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.…”

“…Only one study explained influential social cognitions in the context of injunctive norms [31]. This was defined as the adolescent's perception of their behaviour and the anticipated reaction (expectation) of the parent in relation to that behaviour, with the perceived expectation or reaction, acting as a deterrent for adolescents wishing to engage in risk behaviours such as substance use [23].…”

“…Risk behaviours were clearly defined by only four of the studies [23,26,30,37]. These behaviours were also exemplified as substance use or sexual risk behaviours and explained via these examples.…”