The Prospective Effects of Parents' and Friends' Approval of Drinking on Simultaneous Alcohol and Marijuana Use during College

Effects of the FITSTART + PBI on drinking and negative alcohol-related consequences during the first year of college

Objective: This study evaluated FITSTART+, a parent-based intervention (PBI), for preventing risky drinking among first-year college students. Participants: Participants were traditional first-year students aged between 17 and 20. Method: In total, 391 eligible students completed a baseline survey and their parents were then invited to use the FITSTART+ PBI or Control web-applications. 266 students had a parent who created a profile in the app (FITSTART+ PBI, n = 134; FITSTART+ Control, n = 132). Additionally, 58 parents randomized to the FITSTART+ PBI did not complete the personalized normative feedback (PNF) component of the intervention. Results: No significant effect on drinking or related consequences was detected between Intervention and Control groups. However, exploratory analyses revealed that completing PNF in the FITSTART+ PBI condition was associated with a greater likelihood of remaining zero on consequences at follow-ups. Conclusion: The PNF component of the FITSTART+ PBI showed potential in preventing risky drinking, warranting further research.

A Comparison of Parents' and Students' Reports of General and Alcohol-Specific Parenting Behaviors Across the Four Years of College

OBJECTIVE

Whether college students' reports of their parents' behaviors are as reliable a predictor of student drinking as their parents' own reports remains an open question and a point of contention in the literature. To address this, the current study examined concordance between college student and mother/father reports of the same parenting behaviors relevant to parent-based college drinking interventions (relationship quality, monitoring, and permissiveness), and the extent to which student and parental reports differed in their relation to college drinking and consequences.

METHOD

The sample consisted of 1,429 students and 1,761 parents recruited from three large public universities in the United States (814 mother-daughter, 563 mother-son, 233 father-daughter, and 151 father-son dyads). Students and their parents were each invited to complete four surveys over the course of the students' first 4 years of college (one survey per year).

RESULTS

Paired samples t tests revealed that parental reports of parenting constructs were typically more conservative than student reports. Intraclass correlations revealed moderate associations between parental and student reports on relationship quality, general monitoring, and permissiveness. The associations between parenting constructs and drinking and consequences were also consistent when using parental and student reports of permissiveness. Results were generally consistent for all four types of dyads, and at each of the four time points.

CONCLUSIONS

Taken together, these findings provide additional support for the use of student reports of parental behaviors as a valid proxy of parents' actual reports and as a reliable predictor of college student drinking and consequences.