title: Identifying binge drinkers based on parenting dimensions and alcohol-specific parenting practices: building classifiers on adolescent-parent paired data.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Most Dutch adolescents aged 16 to 18 engage in binge drinking. Previous studies have investigated how parenting dimensions and alcohol-specific parenting practices are related to adolescent alcohol consumption. Mixed results have been obtained on both dimensions and practices, highlighting the complexity of untangling alcohol-related factors. The aim of this study was to investigate (1) whether parents' reports of parenting dimensions and alcohol-specific parenting practices, adolescents' perceptions of these dimensions and practices, or a combination are most informative to identify binge drinkers, and (2) which of these parenting dimensions and alcohol-specific parenting practices are most informative to identify binge drinkers.
  
  
  METHODS
  Survey data of 499 adolescent-parent dyads were collected. The computational technique of data mining was used to allow for a data driven exploration of nonlinear relationships. Specifically, a binary classification task, using an alternating decision tree, was conducted and measures regarding the performance of the classifiers are reported after a 10-fold cross-validation.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Depending on the parenting dimension or practice, parents' reports correctly identified the drinking behaviour of 55.8% (using psychological control) up to 70.2% (using rules) of adolescents. Adolescents' perceptions were best at identifying binge drinkers whereas parents' perceptions were best at identifying non-binge drinkers.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Of the parenting dimensions and practices, rules are particularly informative in understanding drinking behaviour. Adolescents' perceptions and parents' reports are complementary as they can help identifying binge drinkers and non-binge drinkers respectively, indicating that surveying specific aspects of adolescent-parent dynamics can improve our understanding of complex addictive behaviours.
authors.affiliation: Department of Health Promotion, CAPHRI School for Public Health and Primary Care, Maastricht University, P.O. Box 616, 6200 MD, Maastricht, The Netherlands. Rik.Crutzen@maastrichtuniversity.nl.
authors.forename: Rik
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Crutzen
authors.affiliation: UKCRC Centre for Diet and Activity Research, MRC Epidemiology Unit, University of Cambridge School of Clinical Medicine, Institute of Metabolic Science, CB2 0QQ, Cambridge, UK. philippe.giabbanelli@mrc-epid.cam.ac.uk.|Interdisciplinary Research in the Mathematical and Computational Sciences (IRMACS) Centre, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, Canada. philippe.giabbanelli@mrc-epid.cam.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Philippe J
authors.initials: PJ
authors.lastname: Giabbanelli
authors.affiliation: Department of Health Promotion, CAPHRI School for Public Health and Primary Care, Maastricht University, P.O. Box 616, 6200 MD, Maastricht, The Netherlands. astrid.jander@maastrichtuniversity.nl.
authors.forename: Astrid
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Jander
authors.affiliation: Department of Health Promotion, CAPHRI School for Public Health and Primary Care, Maastricht University, P.O. Box 616, 6200 MD, Maastricht, The Netherlands. liesbeth.mercken@maastrichtuniversity.nl.
authors.forename: Liesbeth
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Mercken
authors.affiliation: Department of Health Promotion, CAPHRI School for Public Health and Primary Care, Maastricht University, P.O. Box 616, 6200 MD, Maastricht, The Netherlands. hein.devries@maastrichtuniversity.nl.
authors.forename: Hein
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: de Vries
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000294:Adolescent Behavior / Q000523:psychology*; D000428:Alcohol Drinking / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000523:psychology; D000435:Alcoholic Intoxication / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009426:Netherlands / Q000453:epidemiology; D010287:Parent-Child Relations; D010290:Parents / Q000523:psychology; D012307:Risk Factors; D012951:Socialization