The Role of Discrepancies in Parent and Youth Reporting of Parental Monitoring on Anxiety Symptoms in Early Adolescence
Open Access
Author:
Burke, Margaret Mary
Area of Honors:
Psychology
Degree:
Bachelor of Science
Document Type:
Thesis
Thesis Supervisors:
Kristin Ann Buss, Thesis Supervisor Melissa Dawn Hunter, Thesis Honors Advisor
Keywords:
Psychology development parenting monitoring adolescence discrepancies
Abstract:
Parental control has been associated with an increased risk for externalizing and internalizing symptoms in adolescence. For example, higher levels of parental monitoring are associated with externalizing behaviors in children (Pettit et al, 2003) and adolescent’s anxiety symptoms (Hamza & Willoughby, 2011). The goal of this study is to explore the role of teen-parent discrepancy in parental monitoring and how the overall amount of monitoring is associated with adolescent’s anxiety symptoms.
Participants are drawn from two longitudinal studies of adolescent anxiety development, BETA and TEENS studies. To date, we have collected data on 91 teens (approximately 50% female, Mage = 13.5). This study will use questionnaires from parents and adolescents to measure each construct of parental monitoring reported by both parent and youth and youth anxiety symptoms. To get an understanding of parent-teen discrepancy, the questionnaires of the parent and the adolescent were compared by calculating difference scores.
I hypothesized three different ideas in this thesis: (1) Adolescents’ anxiety symptoms will be associated with higher level of parental monitoring. (2) Higher discrepancy between mothers and teens report of monitoring will predict higher number of anxiety symptoms; (3) Higher discrepancy between mother and teens reporting of anxiety symptoms will be associated with higher discrepancy in monitoring. While none of these hypotheses were supported, we found other findings that are significant to maternal monitoring and child anxiety.
