This project will provide the first empirical test of whether a parenting skill building program (1) can influence or prevent parental substance use, and (2) can impact upon other parent, child and family variables that are believed to be precursors or risk factors for teenage substance use. The project is directed toward 450 poverty-level black parents and their first grade children. It uses a behaviorally-based parenting skill program that has been adapted to make it more relevant to the culture and life circumstances of low income black families and which also contains a special unit of instruction on drug education. Two Cohorts of 180 parents will take the adapted version of the program and 90 parents will serve as a matched nontreatment control group. Extensive pre and post testing will be done with parents and children over a two year period while the children progress from first to second grade. Three levels of potential program effects will be studied: direct effects on the child rearing skills of parents, the quality of the parent-child relationship, and parental and familial substance use; indirect effects on parental depression, environmental stress and resources, child behavior, and child attitudes and intentions to use substances; and tertiary effects on the school behavior, adjustment and academic performance of children. Additional analyses will determine the best predictors of parental and familial substance use and child substance attitudes at the time of the pretest, and the best predictors of positive program effects. Many of the parent, child and family variables that are considered to be precursors or risk factors for teenage substance use are also implicated in the development of child psychopathology and delinquency. Thus, this study also provides data about the potential of the parenting program to prevent other costly health and social problems.
| Myers, H F; Taylor, S; Alvy, K T et al. (1992) Parental and family predictors of behavior problems in inner-city black children. Am J Community Psychol 20:557-76 |
