Understanding the Authoritative Parenting—Early Adolescent Tobacco Use Link: The Mediating Role of Peer Tobacco Use

UNCG Author/Contributor (non-UNCG co-authors, if there are any, appear on document)
Anne C. Fletcher, Associate Professor (Creator)
Institution
The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG )
Web Site: http://library.uncg.edu/

Abstract: Eighth-grade students (N = 156) completed questionnaires in which they reported on their perceptions of parents' warmth. structure, and psychological autonomy granting (used to create an index of authoritative parenting) and their own levels of tobacco use. Adolescents were also asked to list the names of other students at their school with whom they spent time ("friends"). Independent reports obtained from these friends were used to toms an index of the mean level of tobacco use among each adolescent's friends. Higher levels of authoritative parenting were associated with lower levels of tobacco use among target adolescents. The association between parental authoritativeness and adolescent tobacco use was mediated by levels of tobacco use among peers. An amplification effect was observed in which adolescents were particularly unlikely to use tobacco products when they both received authoritative parenting at home and were members of non-tobacco-using peer groups.

Additional Information

Publication
Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 31(4), 311-318.
Language: English
Date: 2002
Keywords
Parenting, Adolescent, Tobacco, Teenagers, Peer pressure, Strictness

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