The theory of planned behavior as mediator of the effect of parental supervision: A study of intentions to violate driving rules in a representative sample of adolescents

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Abstract

Introduction

The study reported here was designed to test the ability of the theory of planned behavior to mediate the effect of parental supervision on adolescents' intentions to violate driving rules.

Method

A representative sample of 1,654 adolescents completed questionnaires during individual and anonymous interviews carried out at their schools.

Results

Results showed that age, gender, prior risky driving-behavior, and parental supervision significantly predict intentions to violate driving rules. Attitude and the subjective norm partially mediate the effect of age, prior behavior, and parental supervision. Perceived behavioral control does not predict intention and is not predicted by other variables.

Impact

The results suggest that social cognitive variables partially mediate the effect of parenting practices such as supervision.

Introduction

Despite repeated road safety campaigns over the last quarter century, road accidents remain the largest single cause of mortality amongst 15 to 25-year olds in most European countries. In the majority of cases, accidents occur in situations where one or more driving rules have been violated, notably those concerning excessive speed or the consumption of alcohol. Understanding why young drivers do not obey driving rules has therefore become of paramount importance in efforts to prevent accidents amongst this age group. In the study presented here, we focused on parental supervision. Parental supervision is defined as parents' knowledge of and information on the child's activities and friends and the enforcement of set living regulations (Bègue & Roché, 2005). This family variable is among the most persistently involved in problem-behavior: children whose activities and relations are subject to parental control commit less serious and less frequent delinquent acts than others (Bègue and Roché, 2005, Jang and Smith, 1997, Igra and Irwin, 1996, Sampson and Laub, 1993). The existence of a relationship between parental control and risk-taking by adolescents has also been demonstrated for driving behaviors, and the relationship appears so strong that accident prevention strategies focusing on parenting have been drawn up (Beck et al., 2002, Hartos et al., 2000, Hartos et al., 2002). In general, studies show that driving restriction is an expression of a high level of parental supervision and that it leads to the greatest decrease in driving-related injuries in teenagers' (Beck et al., 2002). However, parental supervision may also effectively decrease risky driving behaviors of teenagers by transmitting stricter attitudes toward obeying driving rules. In other words, strictly supervised teenagers may be more cautious because they have learned a more negative attitude toward offences than those who are less-strictly supervised. If this is the case, we would expect to observe an effect of parental supervision on the attitude of teenagers to not obeying driving rules: supervised teenagers would be expected to have a more negative attitude toward not obeying driving rules. Moreover, this attitude should predict the adolescent's driving behavior.

In this context, the theory of reasoned action (Ajzen & Fishbein, 1980) and its extended version, the theory of planned behavior (TPB; Ajzen, 1988), provide a useful theoretical background. According to the TPB, the proximal determinants for behaviors are summarized by a limited group of constructs: the intention (the degree to which the person intends to perform the behavior), the attitude toward the behavior (a global evaluation of the behavior), the subjective norm (the degree to which the person thinks important others value the behavior), and the perceived behavioral control (the degree to which a person thinks the behavior is under his or her personal control). The last three constructs are the result of the integration of beliefs regarding the consequences of the behaviors, the difficulties involved in implementing them, and the potential reactions of the person's entourage. Since it was published, the TPB has been the subject of considerable attention. A number of studies and meta-analyses have shown that the TPB is currently one of the most parsimonious and one of the most powerful theories for predicting various social behaviors (Hausenblas et al., 1997, Armitage and Conner, 2001), including driving behaviors (e.g., Marcil et al., 2001, Parker et al., 1998, Parker et al., 1992).

As a theory of the proximal determinants of behaviors, the TPB is considered to mediate the influence of distant factors (Conner and Abraham, 2001, Conner and Sparks, 1996). By mediation, we mean that the effect of a distant factor, such as age, sex, or parental supervision, on behavior, will be explained, at least partially, by the fact that the distant factor determines attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavioral control, and intention, which in turn determine behavior. In other words, the influence of age on driving behavior will be explained by an indirect path: parental supervision influences attitude, which influences intentions, which influences behavior. In this example attitude and intentions play the role of mediator (Baron & Kenny, 1986). In the field of driving behaviors, three studies have shown that the TPB successfully mediates the effects of age and sex. The results obtained by Parker, Manstead, Stradling, Reason, and Baxter (1992), show that age and sex only provide a very modest contribution to predicting the intention to violate driving rules when the TPB variables are included in the same regression model. Similarly, a study by Armitage, Norman, and Conner (2002) suggests that the TPB variables mediate the relation between age, sex, and the intention to engage in risky behaviors, some of which involve violating driving rules. Finally, Elliott, Armitage, and Baughan (2003) have shown that the effects of age and of sex on speeding behaviors are partially mediated by the components of the TPB. However, until now, no attention has been paid to the TPB as a mediator of parental supervision. The objective of this study was to test the ability of the TPB to mediate the influence of this variable. We measured parental supervision and the components of the TPB in a representative sample of adolescents. The age, sex, socio-demographic variables, and complementary indicators of the participants' driving behaviors were also included in the questionnaire. We expected parental supervision to be correlated with intention to obey driving rules and that attitude, the subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control would mediate this relationship.

Section snippets

Participants

The participants were 861 females and 793 males, aged 13 to 19 (M = 15.66, SD = 1.76), living in the Grenoble metropolitan area. The participants were recruited from all the schools in the metropolitan area through a random sampling procedure (Roché, Astor, Ivaldi, & Tournier, 2000). Seven percent of the students from each school were contacted to take part in the study. Participation was subject to parental consent. The refusal rate was 2.5%. Interviews were carried out at the school, during

Results

The correlations between the measures and the descriptive statistics are presented in Table 1. Certain personal and demographic variables inter-correlate, showing that these measures partially overlap. For example, the results show that boys are less supervised by their parents and that boys have more driving experience and commit more offences than girls. A strong correlation is also obtained between driving experience and frequency of violating driving rules, showing that the more frequently

Discussion

In this study we evaluated the ability of the TPB to mediate the influence of parental supervision on the intention to obey driving rules. Our results, based on a large representative sample, suggest that, as expected, parental supervision that is associated in the literature with violating driving rules, also discriminate between adolescents based on the variables of the TPB. Furthermore, attitude and the subjective norm mediate the effects of these variables on the intention to commit

Conclusion

Beyond its theoretical interest, our study suggests that parenting behavior is an important target for road safety campaigns. Operations targeting the components of the TPB have already shown their effectiveness in the field of driving behavior (Delhomme et al., 1999, Hardeman et al., 2002, Parker, 2002, Sheehan et al., 1996). However, these operations target the drivers themselves. To date, the possibility of targeting parents of young drivers in campaigns to reduce accident rates among

Olivier Desrichard, received his doctorate in social psychology in 1994 at the University of Clermont-Ferrand (France). Since 1995 he is at the university of Savoie, currently as Professor of social psychology. His current research interests are in the psychology of risky behaviours.

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    Olivier Desrichard, received his doctorate in social psychology in 1994 at the University of Clermont-Ferrand (France). Since 1995 he is at the university of Savoie, currently as Professor of social psychology. His current research interests are in the psychology of risky behaviours.

    Sébastian Roché, received his doctorate in Political Sciences in 1991. He is currently research Fellow at the CNRS (National Centre for Science and Research and Professor at the University of Grenoble (France). His research interests are in road delinquency and street delinquency.

    Laurent Bègue, received his doctorate of social psychology at the University of Aix-en-Provence (France) in 1999. He is currently Professor of social psychology at the University of Grenoble (France). His research interests are in individual motivations and social regulations in delinquency and aggressive behaviours.

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