Relationship Between School Administrators’ Reports of Parental Involvement in School and Students’ Substance Use: A National Study

Abstract

This study examines the relationship between student substance use and school-level parental involvement as reported by administrators. Questionnaires were administered to school administrators and 111,652 students in 1,011 U.S. schools. Hierarchical logistic regression analyses conducted on 1998–2003 data from students and administrators indicate significantly lower prevalence of alcohol use among eighth-graders in schools where administrators reported high parental involvement. Overall, administrators’ reports of high parental involvement were unrelated to prevalence of substance use among tenth-graders and were associated with higher prevalence of alcohol use among twelfth-graders. Implications and limitations are discussed, along with suggestions for future research.

Keywords:

• alcohol use
• cigarette use
• marijuana use
• multi-level analysis
• parental involvement

Notes

Note. All overall Fs were significant at the p < .001 level. Post hoc comparisons show that eighth-grade means were significantly different from tenth and twelfth grades, and tenth-grade means were significantly different from twelfth grade.

Note. All overall Fs were significant at the p < .001 level. Post hoc comparisons show that eighth-grade means were significantly different from tenth and twelfth grades.

*p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

Note. 1 = Parental Involvement, 2 = Parental Education, and 3 = Interaction Between Parental Involvement and Parental Education. Model 1 includes predictor variable parental involvement unadjusted to student and school demographic characteristics. Model 2 includes predictor variable parental involvement adjusted to student and school demographic characteristics. Model 3 includes predictor variables parental involvement and aggregated parental education. Model 4 includes predictor variables parental involvement, aggregated parental education, and the interaction between parental involvement and aggregated parental education. Regression coefficients in Models 2 through 4 are adjusted for school-level demographic characteristics—school size, type of school (public or private), and urbanicity (urban, suburban, or rural)—and student-level demographic characteristics—ethnicity (White, African-American, Hispanic, or Other), gender, parental education, broken home.

∼p < .10. *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

All references to parental involvement refer to parental involvement at the school level unless otherwise indicated.

Color versions of one or more of the figures in the article can be found online at www.tandfonline.com/wcas.