Adolescent Responses to Parental Monitoring Messages: The Influence of Parental Monitoring, Parental Warmth, and Marijuana Use Status

This paper reports the results of a series of secondary analyses conducted on data from the National Survey of Parents and Youth – nationally representative longitudinal data collected in the evaluation of the National Youth Anti-drug Campaign. The analyses focused on investigating the role of parental monitoring, parental warmth, and user status on evaluations of parental monitoring campaign ads, intent to use marijuana, and actual future marijuana use. Results of the analyses support the important role played by parenting/family constructs in adolescent evaluations of messages targeting parental monitoring as well as marijuana use. Parental monitoring and warmth interacted to directly predict future marijuana intentions and actual use. Ad evaluation was impacted by ad type (whether ads were focused on parental monitoring or not) as well as by an interaction between parental monitoring, warmth, and ad type. Lastly, ad evaluation was impacted by user status and an interaction between parental monitoring, warmth, and user status. The implications of these findings for future research and drug prevention campaign development will be discussed.