What are parents doing to reduce adolescent alcohol misuse? Evaluating concordance with parenting guidelines for adolescent alcohol use

BACKGROUND: The Parenting Guidelines for Adolescent Alcohol Use were developed to support parents in reducing adolescent alcohol misuse. The aims of this paper were to: (1) validate an online parent self-assessment survey as a criterion-referenced measure of parental factors that are important for predicting adolescent alcohol misuse; (2) examine parent web-users’ concordance with the Parenting Guidelines (extent to which their knowledge and behaviours align with Guidelines recommendations), and (3) examine the associations of parent and child characteristics with parental Guidelines concordance. METHODS: Participants were 489 parents who completed the online survey. The survey assessed parent and child characteristics and parental concordance with the Guidelines in nine parenting areas. Reliability of the survey measure was assessed via an estimate of the agreement coefficient for each of the nine areas. Concurrent validity was examined by exploring the correlates of parental Guidelines concordance. RESULTS: Reliability of the measure was acceptable to high in eight of the nine parenting areas. Greater parental Guidelines concordance was associated with being female, beliefs about healthy levels of drinking that align with the Australian national alcohol use guidelines, drinking within guidelines-recommended levels, the reduced likelihood of another adult in the household with a drinking problem, an older age of adolescent alcohol initiation, and greater confidence in the reported age of adolescent initiation. CONCLUSIONS: This validated self-assessment parenting measure can be useful for identifying targets for parenting interventions designed to prevent or reduce adolescent alcohol misuse, and as a pre- and post-intervention assessment to assess the effects of such interventions. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12889-015-1452-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.