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Engaging Rural Parents in Family-Focused Programs to Prevent Youth Substance Abuse

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Abstract

We employed multilevel structural equation modeling with data collected during telephone interviews with 1,156 parents of sixth graders from 36 rural schools to examine the relationships of family sociodemographic factors, parents' perceptions of their child's susceptibility to future substance use involvement, parents' perceptions of their ability to prevent such problems, and the perceived benefits of family-skills programs designed to prevent adolescent problems. Family-level findings suggested that parent gender and marital status were particularly salient; each exhibited direct effects on each of the three parent perceptions examined. Findings supported the hypotheses that parental efficacy perceptions inversely affect perceptions of child susceptibility and that perceptions of child susceptibility positively affect perceived program benefits. At the community level, lower household incomes were associated with higher levels of perceived child susceptibility to substance use.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Social and Behavioral Research, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa

    Cleve Redmond, Richard Spoth & Chungyeol Shin

  2. Department of Criminology, Sociology, and Geography, Arkansas State University, Jonesboro, Arkansas

    Gretchen J. Hill

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  1. Cleve Redmond
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  2. Richard Spoth
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  3. Chungyeol Shin
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  4. Gretchen J. Hill
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Redmond, C., Spoth, R., Shin, C. et al. Engaging Rural Parents in Family-Focused Programs to Prevent Youth Substance Abuse. The Journal of Primary Prevention 24, 223–242 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1023/B:JOPP.0000018047.58778.d1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/B:JOPP.0000018047.58778.d1

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