PARENTAL PARTICIPATION IN PREVENTIVE SUBSTANCE USE FAMILY-BASED INTERVENTIONS: AN EMPIRICAL REVIEW

Substance use and misuse are very common in adolescence. Parents play an important part in substance use, both through inducing risk or promoting protection and resilience. Family-based interventions have proven to be a useful approach to prevent adolescent substance use and other youth problem behaviors. However, low participation rates are an important threat to the validity of family-based preventive interventions. It has long been recognized that one of the major problems in implementing family-based preventive interventions has been the recruitment, retention and participation of parents. Besides, the benefits of increased parent participation in preventive parent training are associated with a lasting effect on adolescent behavior. Identify specific determinants of participant engagement in family-based prevention programs is of utmost importance, as the level of parental engagement can be a predictor of program effectiveness. There has recently been increased attention to understanding how individual, contextual and intervention factors can predict parental participation in family-based drug prevention interventions. Research on predictors of participation is helpful in the way it can identify those individuals who may be at highest risk for drop out. In this paper we provide an overview of the more recent developments of the several predictors of family participation in preventive substance use and other problems family-based programs. Keeping in mind the specific dynamic determinants of participation examined in this review, we finally suggest a theoretical framework of family participation that includes four basic components: (1) family interaction patterns; (2) parent cognitions and attributions about child's behavior problems; (3) parent psychological variables; and; (4) parent perceptions about the preventive intervention.