title: Parental Monitoring, Association with Externalized Behavior, and Academic Outcomes in Urban African-American Youth: A Moderated Mediation Analysis.
abstract: African-American adolescents exposed to neighborhood disadvantage are at increased risk for engaging in problem behavior and academic underachievement. It is critical to identify the mechanisms that reduce problem behavior and promote better academic outcomes in this population. Based on social disorganization and socioecological theories, the current prospective study examined pathways from parental monitoring to academic outcomes via externalizing behavior at different levels of neighborhood disadvantage. A moderated mediation model employing maximum likelihood was conducted on 339 African-American students from 9th to 11th grade (49.3% females) with a mean age of 14.8 years (SD ± 0.35). The results indicated that parental monitoring predicted low externalizing behavior, and low externalizing behavior predicted better academic outcomes after controlling for externalizing behavior in 9th grade, intervention status, and gender. Mediation was supported, as the index of mediation was significant. Conversely, neighborhood disadvantage did not moderate the path from parental monitoring to externalizing behavior. Implications for intervention at both community and individual levels and study limitations are discussed.
authors.affiliation: DePaul University, Chicago, IL, USA. rlopezta@depaul.edu.
authors.forename: Roberto
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Lopez-Tamayo
authors.affiliation: DePaul University, Chicago, IL, USA.
authors.forename: W
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: LaVome Robinson
authors.affiliation: The George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA.
authors.forename: Sharon F
authors.initials: SF
authors.lastname: Lambert
authors.affiliation: DePaul University, Chicago, IL, USA.
authors.forename: Leonard A
authors.initials: LA
authors.lastname: Jason
authors.affiliation: Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA.
authors.forename: Nicholas S
authors.initials: NS
authors.lastname: Ialongo
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D001741:Black or African American / Q000193:education* / Q000523:psychology*; D000850:Anomie; D015142:Baltimore; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007389:Internal-External Control; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008297:Male; D017063:Outcome Assessment, Health Care; D016487:Parenting / Q000208:ethnology* / Q000523:psychology*; D011203:Poverty / Q000208:ethnology / Q000523:psychology; D000066553:Problem Behavior / Q000523:psychology; D012111:Residence Characteristics; D013223:Statistics as Topic; D014477:Underachievement; D014505:Urban Population
keywords: Academic outcome; Community disadvantage; Externalizing behavior; Neighborhood disadvantage; Parental monitoring; Poverty; Unemployment