|
| "Best Bets" to Prevent Multiple Internalizing and Externalizing Problems: Family Interventions |
|
|
|
Both parents and peers can have profound effects on an adolescent's externalizing behaviors. Parent smoking, drug and alcohol use, parent-child relationships, and family discord are all discussed as possible precursors to later adolescent conduct disorder and drug and alcohol use and abuse. Negative peer interaction quality and having negative peer role models have also been implicated. However, it is possible that it is the combination of all or some of these factors that predict adolescent outcomes. Findings on the effects of both parenting practices and peer interactions, in fact, have questioned the common perception that SES has strong and significant effects on all problem behaviors. For example, in a project using the Add Health data set, Blum, Beuhring, and Rinehart (2000) studied several variables within the child's ecosystem that might predict various deviant behaviors. Relevant to this report, alcohol use was found to be predicted by individual, peer, and family level variables; socioeconomic status accounted for very little of the overall variance of the model, net of these more proximal factors. Overall, the family context comprised a very large percent of the variance predicting alcohol use among males, across ethnicities, while peers accounted for more of the variance among all females. Therefore, looking closer at the specific types and qualities of parent-child and peer interactions is important in order to understand completely what predicts adolescent externalizing disorders. |
|
<< Back to Table | Full Report (.pdf) | Executive Summary - View References - |
|
|