Alcohol consumption and health effects

Nursing

Alcohol Consumption

Adolescent alcohol consumption is a very serious public health concern. Research has found that prevention programs that target parents can help put a stop underage drinking. The complexity is that participation by parents in these kinds of programs is usually not very high. Parents as well as peers often play an important role in the development of young people's alcohol habits. In an evaluation of individual risk aspects for young people's substance use, it has been shown that the pressures of peers as well as family and parent concerns are significant environmental issues. Consequently, the aim of the study done by Pettersson, et al. (2009) was to examine this non-participation in a parental support program that was aimed at preventing underage alcohol consumption. The Health Belief Model was used as a tool for this analysis. In order to understand the lack of participation in parental programs a quasi-experimental mixed method design was utilized. The participants in this study were asked to participate in a parental program that targeted parents with children who were in grades 7-9.

The results of this study found that educational level was one of the most important socio-demographic factors that can be used for predicting a lack of participation. Parents who had a low level of education were found to be less likely to contribute than those who had higher education levels. Other factors linked with young people and alcohol was not found to be of important. As an alternative, program-related factors were found to predict a lack of participation. Parents who did not think that there was a need for the intervention and who did not attend the information meeting were the ones who were more likely not to participate. It was found that things like time demands emerged to be important (Pettersson, Linden-Bostrom and Eriksson, 2009).

How the qualitative findings add to the quantitative findings in this paper

The present study used a quasi-experimental design. Parents who participated in a parental program were compared to parents who did participate. Differences between parents before they were asked into the program were looked at along with the parents' own knowledge of the reasons for non-participation after the program was put into place. A mixed method plan was used that used quantitative data from a longitudinal survey which tracked parents over a three-year period of secondary school and qualitative data from the last questionnaire in the set of surveys that were given by the researchers. A mixed-method plan is an appropriate method when difficult issues are being looked at. With this design the data was analyzed both statistically and with content analysis. In the examination of the significance of different components of the HBM a more descriptive approach was combined along with multivariate analysis. The two groups of non-participants were compared with the group of parents who did participate. In the analysis of the quantitative data, crude odds ratios were planned. Afterwards, a multinomial regression analysis was used (Pettersson, Linden-Bostrom and Eriksson, 2009).

The qualitative analysis of obvious barriers was completed by using content analysis on the answers to the opened-ended questions that were in the questionnaires. There were 176 responses all that considered meaning units. The significance units were then reduced into shorter sentences without altering the basis of the statements. The reduced meaning units were labeled with one or several codes. Sub-categories were shaped based on those codes and classified into eight main categories. The main lessons were separated into two main themes. The assessment was carried out by the first author, but before any concluding decision was made the co-authors read through all the steps in the analysis in order to verify the results (Pettersson, Linden-Bostrom and Eriksson, 2009).

Strengths and limitations of the mixed-methods approach

By joining quantitative and qualitative data, a better understanding of the predicament addressed in the study can be given and a more inclusive picture can surface. The mixture of quantitative and qualitative data gives a more detailed knowledge of the participants' viewpoints. The combination of the parents' quantitative answers from the three surveys along with their written answers about reasons for not participating offered additional information about non-participation. Two positions of non-participation were clarified in this study. These were limited non-participation and non-participation. Parents who were selected as partial non-participants had put in some measures into the program but they did not believe themselves to be participants. This is a significant distinction, because the parents were allowed to describe themselves as non-participants even if they took part in some of the activities. Additional analysis will demonstrate if this distinction is important for the results of the program (Pettersson, Linden-Bostrom and Eriksson, 2009).