Date of Award

2011

Document Type

Honors Thesis

Department

Behavioral Sciences

First Advisor

Duane McBride

Second Advisor

Gary Hopkins

Abstract

What is the relationship between parent-child relationships and teen substance use? Our relationship with our parents can impact our lives for the better or the worse. To study this we analyzed a survey done by the Community that Cares. Alcohol use, marijuana use and tobacco use were determined by the respondent's self-reported substance use within the last within their lifetime on a 7 point Likert scale that ranges from 0 times to 40 times. Parental Relationships was measured by the respondents' feelings about how close they felt to their parents on a 4 point Likert scale ranging from no to yes. Family Conflict was measured by the respondent's answers to whether or not there were arguments and yelling occurring in the home on a 4 point Likert scale ranging from no to yes. This study surveyed 570 students ages 12-19 in grades 7 -9 in 2008 at Northwest elementary and high schools. The hypothesis that high-quality parent-child relationships are inversely correlated with teen substance use was supported as was the hypothesis that poor parent-child relationships would be positively correlated with substance use.

Subject Area

Parent and child, Substance abuse, Teenagers--Substance use

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.

DOI

https://dx.doi.org/10.32597/honors/16/

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