Schedule:
Thursday, May 31, 2018
Columbia A/B (Hyatt Regency Washington, Washington, DC)
* noted as presenting author
Christopher Mehus, PhD, Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, Minneapolis, MN
Myriam Forster, PhD, Assistant Professor, California State University, Northridge, Northridge, CA
Gary C. K. Chan, PhD, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Queensland, Herston, Australia
Sheryl A. Hemphill, PhD, Professor, Australian Catholic University, Fitzroy MDC, Australia
John Winston Toumbourou, PhD, Professor and Chair in Health Psychology, Deakin University, Geelong, Australia
Barbara McMorris, PhD, Associate Professor, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN
Introduction. Parental monitoring and antisocial peer associations are both risk factors for negative behavioral outcomes. Previous research has yielded somewhat disparate findings regarding the causal relationships between parental monitoring and antisocial peer association or problem behavior. Few studies have collected the necessary longitudinal data to examine these relationships in a sample followed throughout adolescence. Additionally, few studies have measured antisocial peer associations rather than problem behavior. The temporal order of these variables has significant implications for family-focused preventive interventions. We tested these reciprocal relationships across four waves of an adolescent sample. Based on the Social Interaction Learning model, we hypothesized that poor parental monitoring would predict increased association with antisocial peers but that the reverse would not be significant.
Methods. We used four waves of data (grades 5, 7, 9, 11) from students in Victoria, Australia (n=922) participating in the International Youth Development Study (IYDS). The IYDS used a modified version of the Communities that Care survey. We used MPlus 7.2 to construct the cross-lagged path model, controlling for gender. Poor monitoring was a six-item scale of youths’ self-reported answers to items that asked about parental monitoring and parent’s knowledge of their activities. Anti-social peer associations was a six-item scale of items related to illegal or delinquent behavior of the youth’s friends in the last year.
Results. The specified reciprocal model fit the data well (χ2(12) = 56.141, p < .001; RMSEA = .06 [90% CI: .047 - .080]; CFI = .96; SRMR = .04). Across all data waves, poor parental monitoring predicted higher antisocial peer associations at the next wave, whereas antisocial peer associations only predicted poorer monitoring from the 7th to 9th grade waves.
Conclusion. Findings largely support the temporal ordering proposed by the Social Interaction Learning model. The results will be presented in the context of existing literature in this area, which is laden with complexity related to the operationalization of monitoring and differences related to developmental stages. The results of this study support the predominant view that parental monitoring is a useful target for family-focused preventive interventions.
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