The present application proposes to carry out a meta-analysis of the scientific literature on the relation of parental drinking to child and adolescent drinking. Adolescent drinking is a significant public health problem that impacts morbidity, mortality and negative psychosocial outcomes in this population. According to Social Learning Theory, parents who drink serve as significant models for the adoption of alcohol use by their underage offspring in childhood and adolescence. Despite the current emphasis in the field on peer drinking, a large number of studies report a consistent modest association between parental modeling of alcohol use and child and adolescent drinking. To date, however, there has been no meta-analytic estimate of the magnitude of this association across studies of adolescents, no attention to studies of children, no attention to studies in languages other than English, and no systematic attention to the factors (moderators) influencing the magnitude of association between parent and adolescent drinking or to factors mediating the effect of parental drinking on adolescent drinking. A comprehensive review quantifying the importance of parent modeling of drinking and establishing the moderators and mediators of its effects on adolescent drinking could warrant the development and inclusion of modules targeting parent modeling in family-focused preventive interventions, thereby enhancing their potential preventive impact. The proposed research has the following Specific Aims:
Aim 1 : To carry out a systematic search of the literature on the relation of parental drinking to child and adolescent drinking.
Aim 2 : Meta-analyses will summarize the magnitude of relation between parental modeling of drinking and adolescent drinking separately for cross-sectional studies and for longitudinal studies.
Aim 3 : Analyses will test 8 hypotheses regarding moderating factors that impact the magnitude of the relation.
Aim 4 : Meta-analytic mediators of the parent-offspring drinking relation will be tested to examine potential mechanisms and processes by which parent drinking influences offspring drinking.
Aim 5 : Several papers reporting the analyses will be prepared for publication. Strengths of the proposed meta-analysis include its focus on an important but under-appreciated topic (the relation of parent modeling of alcohol use to adolescent drinking) its focus on important moderator and mediator variables, its inclusion of both longitudinal and cross-sectional studies, its use of multiple search engines, its inclusion of non-English articles, its explicit inclusion of the gray literature, its utilization of a proven commercial meta- analysis software package (CMA), and the sizable collection of articles already in hand (demonstrating the feasibility of the proposed meta-analyses). Meta-analyses documenting the magnitude of the relation of parent modeling to adolescent drinking and establishing its moderators and mediators could reinvigorate research in this arena, enhance the efficacy of family-focused preventive interventions targeting adolescent alcohol use, and provide estimates of effect size to guide future research.
To date, alcohol prevention activities in the family context have generally dealt with improving family management and parenting, not with efforts to reduce parent modeling of drinking and drunkenness. The proposed systematic search and meta-analyses will quantitatively document the impact of parental modeling of alcohol use on adolescent drinking, supporting the need to add modules targeting parent drinking to family-based preventive interventions.
