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Knowledge Lability: Within-Person Changes in Parental Knowledge and Their Associations with Adolescent Problem Behavior

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Abstract

Higher levels of parental knowledge about youth activities have been associated with lower levels of youth risky behavior. Yet little is known about how parental knowledge fluctuates during early adolescence and how those fluctuations are associated with the development of problem behavior. We use the term lability to describe within-person fluctuations in knowledge over time with higher lability indicating greater fluctuations in knowledge from year-to-year. This longitudinal study of rural adolescents (N = 840) investigated if change in parental knowledge across four waves of data from grades 6 to 8 is characterized by lability, and if greater lability is associated with higher youth substance use, delinquency, and internalizing problems in grade 9. Our models indicated that only some of the variance in parental knowledge was accounted for by developmental trends. The remaining residual variance reflects within-person fluctuations around these trends, lability, and measurement and occasion-specific error. Even controlling for level and developmental trends in knowledge, higher knowledge lability (i.e., more fluctuation) was associated with increased risk for later alcohol and tobacco use, and for girls, higher delinquency and internalizing problems. Our findings suggest that lability in parental knowledge has unique implications for adolescent outcomes. The discussion focuses on mechanisms that may link knowledge lability to substance use. Interventions may be most effective if they teach parents to consistently and predictably decrease knowledge across early adolescence.

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Notes

  1. We also ran our models including race as a covariate and obtained the same pattern of results.

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Acknowledgments

Work on this paper was supported by research grant R03 DA038685 and R01 DA013709 from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, as well as R01 HD076994 and R24 HD041025 from NICHD, and UL TR000127 from the National Institute for Research Resources and National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institute on Drug Abuse or the National Institutes of Health.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA

    Melissa A. Lippold

  2. The Pennsylvania State University, State College, PA, USA

    Gregory M. Fosco, Nilam Ram & Mark E. Feinberg

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  1. Melissa A. Lippold
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  2. Gregory M. Fosco
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Correspondence to Melissa A. Lippold.

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Lippold, M.A., Fosco, G.M., Ram, N. et al. Knowledge Lability: Within-Person Changes in Parental Knowledge and Their Associations with Adolescent Problem Behavior. Prev Sci 17, 274–283 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11121-015-0604-5

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