Friday, November 20, 2015

The Association of Low Parental Monitoring with Early Substance Use in European American and African American Adolescent Girls

OBJECTIVE:
Research indicates that low parental monitoring increases the risk for early substance use. Because low parental monitoring tends to co-occur with other familial and neighborhood factors, the specificity of the association is challenging to establish. Using logistic regression and propensity score analyses, we examined associations between low parental monitoring and early substance use in European American (EA) and African American (AA) girls, controlling for risk factors associated with low parental monitoring.

METHOD:
Participants were 3,133 EA and 523 AA girls from the Missouri Adolescent Female Twin Study with data on parental monitoring assessed via self-report questionnaire, and with ages at first use of alcohol, tobacco, and cannabis queried in at least one of three diagnostic interviews (median ages = 15, 22, and 24 years).

RESULTS:
The rate of early alcohol use was greater in EA than AA girls, whereas the proportion of AA girls reporting low parental monitoring was higher than in EA girls. EA girls who experienced low parental monitoring were at elevated risk for early alcohol, tobacco, and cannabis use, findings supported in both logistic regression and propensity score analyses. Evidence regarding associations between low parental monitoring and risk for early substance use was less definitive for AA girls.

CONCLUSIONS:
Findings highlight the role of parental monitoring in modifying risk for early substance use in EA girls. However, we know little regarding the unique effects, if any, of low parental monitoring on the timing of first substance use in AA girls.

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By:  Blustein EC1,2Munn-Chernoff MA3,4,5Grant JD3,4Sartor CE3,4,6Waldron M3,7Bucholz KK3,4Madden PA3,4Heath AC3,4.
  • 1Department of Biology, Rhodes College, Memphis, Tennessee.
  • 2College of Medicine, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, Little Rock, Arkansas.
  • 3Department of Psychiatry, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, Missouri.
  • 4Alcoholism Research Center, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, Missouri.
  • 5Department of Psychiatry, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
  • 6Department of Psychiatry, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut.
  • 7Department of Counseling and Educational Psychology, Indiana University School of Education, Bloomington, Indiana. 


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