title: Perceived parental monitoring and health risk behavior among public secondary school students in El Salvador.
abstract: Although parental monitoring has received considerable attention in studies of U.S. adolescents, few published studies have examined how parents' knowledge of their children's whereabouts may influence health risk behaviors in adolescents living in Latin America. We investigated the association between perceived parental monitoring and substance use, fighting, and sexual behaviors in rural and urban Salvadoran adolescents (n = 982). After adjusting for several sociodemographic covariates, multilevel regression analyses indicated that students reporting low parental monitoring were between 2 to 3.5 times more likely to report risk behaviors examined. The promotion of specific parenting practices such as parental monitoring may hold promise for reducing adolescent risk behaviors in El Salvador.
authors.affiliation: 1Michael and Susan Dell Center for Advancement of Healthy Living, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston School of Public Health, Houston, Texas, USA. andrew.e.springer@uth.tmc.edu
authors.forename: Andrew E
authors.initials: AE
authors.lastname: Springer
authors.forename: Shreela
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Sharma
authors.forename: Alba Margarita
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: de Guardado
authors.forename: Francisco Vázquez
authors.initials: FV
authors.lastname: Nava
authors.forename: Steven H
authors.initials: SH
authors.lastname: Kelder
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000294:Adolescent Behavior; D000328:Adult; D002648:Child; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D004493:Education; D004544:El Salvador; D005260:Female; D015438:Health Behavior; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010287:Parent-Child Relations; D016487:Parenting / Q000523:psychology*; D012309:Risk-Taking; D012574:Schools; D016728:Self-Injurious Behavior / Q000523:psychology*; D013334:Students / Q000523:psychology*