Parental Expertise, Trustworthiness, and Accessibility: Parent‐Adolescent Communication and Adolescent Risk Behavior

A communication framework of persuasion and attitude change was utilized to analyze parent-adolescent communication about adolescent risk behavior. Three parent dimensions were deemed important: (a) perceived expertise, (b) perceived trustworthiness, and (c) perceived accessibility. Data were collected in surveys from 668 mother-adolescent dyads in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods in New York City (N = 668). Results showed weak correspondence between how expert, trustworthy, and accessible mothers thought they were on the one hand and how their sons and daughters characterized them on the other. All dimensions were related to how often adolescents said they talked with their mothers about a risk behavior, which, in turn, was predictive of lower levels of adolescent risk behavior. Implications for future research are discussed. Key Words: adolescence, adolescent sexual/contraceptive behavior, communication, parent-adolescent relations, sexual behavior, tobacco use. Considerable research has been conducted on parent-adolescent communication as a factor that influences adolescent risk behavior. Whereas early research questioned a link between these constructs, more recent studies have been supportive (e.g., Hutchinson, Jemmott, Jemmott, Braverman, & Fong, 2003; Jaccard, Dodge, & Dittus, 2002; Miller, Forehand, & Kotchick, 1999; Simons-Morton, 2002). In addition to direct links, studies have found that parent-adolescent communication moderates relationships between other variables and adolescent risk behavior. For example, Whitaker and Miller (2000) found peer norms were associated more strongly with sexual activity for adolescents who had not discussed sex or condoms with a parent, as opposed to those who had engaged in such conversations. Although some studies have yielded contradictory results (e.g., Darling & Hicks, 1982; Widmer, 1997), the bulk of current research suggests that parent-adolescent communication serves as a protective factor for adolescent risk activity (Dittus, Jaccard, & Gordon, 1999; Litrownik et al., 2000). Most research on parent-adolescent communication correlates measures of the frequency of communication about the risk behavior in question to measures of risk activity. The communication process obviously is more complex than this, and the field can benefit from richer theoretical frameworks that can organize and guide research on parent-adolescent communication. Jaccard et al. (2002) present such a framework. Their approach draws on perspectives from attitude change and persuasion research in social psychology. It is restricted to the situation where a parent is trying to persuade or convince a child to perform or not perform a behavior. Jaccard et al. (2002) recognize that parent-adolescent communication is reciprocal and dynamic in character but suggest that it also is useful to think about such communication from a top-down perspective. The theoretical framework conceptualizes communication in terms of five facets: (a) the source of a communication (the parent), (b) the communication itself (often referred to as the message), (c) the medium or channel through which the message is transmitted (e.g., face-toface, written materials), (d) the recipient of the communication (the adolescent), and (e) the context in which the communication occurs. Each of these components has subcomponents. For example, sources of a message differ in their age, gender, expertise, and trustworthiness. Recipients of communications differ in their motivational states, emotional states, past experiences, and expectations. The surrounding environment varies in terms of its temporal, physical, social, and cultural features. Variations in each of these five components represent independent variables that ultimately affect how an adolescent responds to parental communications. The present research focuses primarily on one facet of the theory, namely, source characteristics of parents that influence adolescent risk behavior. …