Parental Smoking-specific Communication, Adolescents' SmokingBehavior and Friendship Selection

摘要

In this study, we investigated whether parentalsmoking-specific communication is related to adolescents'friendship-selection processes. Furthermore, we investi-gated whether adolescents and their best friends influenceeach other over time, and what role parents play in thisprocess. In the present study we used data from the Familyand Health project in which at baseline 428 full familiesparticipated. In this 2-year, three-wave longitudinal studydata were available from fathers, mothers, early adoles-cents (aged M = 13.4 years, SD = .514 and middleadolescents (aged M = 15.2 years, SD = .60). Themajority of the participating adolescents were of Dutchorigin (>95%). There was an almost equal distribution ofboys and girls, and adolescents with lower, middle, andhigher educational levels were equally represented. Anal-yses were conducted by means of Structural EquationModeling. Results demonstrate that a high quality of thesmoking-specific communication is related to a lowerlikelihood of adolescent smoking, whereas the frequency ispositively associated with adolescent smoking. Both thequality and frequency of parental smoking-specific com-munication were related to adolescents' selective affiliationwith (non-)smoking friends. The findings suggest thatparental smoking-specific communication is associated with adolescent smoking directly but also indirectly byinfluencing the friends the adolescents will associate with.