Parental functioning and adolescent drug involvement

Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore MD

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Abstract

This pre-doctoral research is formulated to examine relationships between parental functioning and adolescent drug involvement. Poor family functioning has generally been considered a risk factor of adolescent drug use. The proposed research will expand our current knowledge by exploring how latent classes of adolescent drug involvement fit into a structural model that incorporates aspects of parenal functioning (parent monitoring, parent-child attachment, and parental drug use). Further analyses will explore the association between the structural model and classifications of risk and harm (the sample will be stratified into selected, indicated and clinical populations of risk). Further research is also needed to test the influence of parental functioning at one developmental period, on adolescent drug involvement at subsequent time points. Data from 1406 middle school and high school students, grades 7 through 12, were obtained using the International Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health during the first wave of data collection. The second wave of collection, scheduled for Spring 2003, will collect longitudinal information for youth who were in grades 7, 8, and 9 during the first wave. Those adolescents will now be in grades 10, 11, and 12. Constructs of parent functioning and adolescent drug involvement and risk will be the focus of this study. Note from sponsor: The director of this applicant's institutional T32 program (Dr. Jim Anthony) encourages trainees supported by the program to prepare and submit their own individual F31 proposals as part of the preparation of their thesis proposals and in advance of the preliminary oral exam.