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R E V I E W
Drug and Alcohol Review (September 2015), 34, 531–539 DOI: 10.1111/dar.12258
‘I think other parents might. . . .’: Using a projective technique to explore parental supply of alcohol SANDRA C. JONES1, CHRISTOPHER MAGEE2 & KELLY ANDREWS1 1
Centre for Health and Social Research (CHaSR), Mary MacKillop Institute for Health Research, Australian Catholic University, Melbourne, Australia and 2Centre for Health Initiatives, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, Australia
Abstract Introduction and Aims. A growing body of research indicates parental supply of alcohol to children and adolescents is common.The present study aimed to examine parents’ reasons for supplying alcohol to adolescents that they may find hard to articulate or not be consciously aware of. Design and Methods. A projective methodology was used, whereby respondents were asked to explain the thoughts and motivations of a gender-matched parent in a scenario in which the parent did or did not provide alcohol to their teenage child. Respondents were 97 mothers and 83 fathers of teenagers who completed an anonymous online survey. Open-ended responses were coded thematically; t-tests were used to compare quantitative responses between the scenarios. Results. The quantitative analysis found the parent who provided alcohol was less likely to be seen as making sure their child was safe and educating them about boundaries, but more likely to be seen as being a friend as well as a parent and (for females only) making sure their child fits in with others.The open-ended responses showed explanations for not providing alcohol most commonly focused on ensuring the child’s safety, obeying the law, and setting rules and boundaries, and for providing alcohol focused on ensuring the child fit in with peers and beliefs about harm minimisation. Discussion and Conclusions. The findings suggest that these respondents (parents) harboured a number of misperceptions about underage drinking and experienced conflicts in weighing up the perceived benefits of providing alcohol to their children against the risks of adolescent drinking. [Jones SC, Magee C, Andrews K. ‘I think other parents might. . . .’: Using a projective technique to explore parental supply of alcohol. Drug Alcohol Rev 2015;34:531–9] Key words: alcohol consumption, adolescent, parent, projective technique.
Introduction Parental supply of alcohol to teenagers In 2011, approximately one-third of Australian adolescent current drinkers reported that their parents gave them their last drink and two-thirds consumed their last alcoholic drink under adult supervision [1]. It is important to note that Australia does not have a legal drinking age; rather, there is a legal alcohol purchasing age of 18 years, and while it is illegal in most Australian states to provide alcohol to someone else’s child without their consent, it is not illegal for a parent to provide it to their own child. However, the national guidelines recommend that not drinking is the safest option for those
under 18 years of age and that parents should endeavour to ‘delay the initiation of drinking for as long as possible’ [2]. Although a growing body of research suggests parental supply of alcohol is common, there is relatively limited insight into the factors underlying parental supply. Studies across a range of countries and demographic groups have found that many parents perceive parental supply to be an effective harm minimisation approach [3–7]. However, recent research suggests parental supply of alcohol may be harmful rather than protective, with studies from Australia [4], the USA [8] and across both jurisdictions [9] finding parental provision of alcohol is associated with increases in drinking intentions and behaviours.
Sandra C. Jones BA, MBA, MPH, MAssessEval, PhD, Director, Christopher Magee BPsych(hons), PhD, Deputy Director, Kelly Andrews BSocSc, PGDipHealthProm, MSc(res), Program Manager. Correspondence to Prof. Sandra C. Jones, Centre for Health and Social Research (CHaSR), Mary MacKillop Institute for Health Research, Australian Catholic University, Level 5, 215 Spring Street, Melbourne, Vic. 3000, Australia. Tel: +61 (3) 9953 3709; Fax: +61 (3) 9663 5726; E-mail: [email protected] Received 14 July 2014; accepted for publication 28 January 2015. © 2015 Australasian Professional Society on Alcohol and other Drugs
532
S. C. Jones et al.
It is likely that social norms play an important role in parents’ decisions to provide alcohol to their children. In Australia, as in many countries, there is a strong belief among adolescents and parents that both adolescent alcohol consumption and parental supply of alcohol are normative [10,11]. Adolescence is a period where the nature of child– parent relationships is altered as adolescents seek more equity and autonomy [12–14]. It is plausible that these changes influence parent attitudes and behaviours regarding the supply of alcohol, with parents perceiving this as a sign of equity, trust and growing autonomy. Clearly, a variety of factors underlie parental supply of alcohol. These include, but are not limited to, social norms, perceptions of harm minimisation and changes in parent–child dynamics associated with adolescence. Although some research has investigated issues surrounding harm minimisation and monitoring, other factors such as the dynamics of child–parent relationships also need to be considered. Such research requires careful consideration of the optimal methodologies. Previous research with children and adolescents consistently reports parents as a primary source of alcohol; however, studies with parents tend to find lower rates of reporting of parental supply of alcohol than studies with children [15]. Even studies that have included children and parents from the same families find that children are more likely to report that their parents allow them to drink than parents are to report doing so [8,16,17], possibly reflecting two opposing social desirability biases. Using projective techniques to explore sensitive topics The majority of these studies have been surveys or interviews that have directly asked parents about their own behaviour, which may prompt socially desirable responses, particularly given the common—but erroneous—perception that supplying alcohol to your own children is illegal [18]. Projective techniques offer an innovative solution to overcoming these biases and may provide important insights into the reasons underlying parental supply of alcohol. These techniques are based on evidence indicating that people automatically infer the personality traits of other people and attribute agentic motives to their behaviour [19–23] and that these ascribed motives reflect their own conscious or subconscious motivations. Projective methodologies—such as picture response and third-person techniques (projective questioning)—are designed to elicit people’s underlying motivations, beliefs, attitudes and concerns, particularly those beliefs which people find hard to articulate [24] or even be consciously aware of [25]. These techniques have been successfully used to © 2015 Australasian Professional Society on Alcohol and other Drugs
explore a range of behaviours and attitudes, from fear of flying [26] to reasons for non-purchase of dry soup mixes [27]. Importantly for the present study, it has been suggested that projective techniques can reduce social desirability bias when considering behaviours with a strong social influence such as tobacco smoking and alcohol consumption [28,29]. Early studies explored perceptions of instant coffee drinkers [30] and purchasers of different brands of beer [31] and found that respondents described consumers more negatively when they were described as purchasing instant coffee in the former study and the non-leading brand in the latter. More recently, an Australian study used picture response and story response techniques to explore the food decisions of parents of preschool aged children, finding that respondents associated the decision to purchase healthy food with ‘good parenting’ and unhealthy food with ‘expediency’ [32]. In another Australian study, a similar methodology was used to investigate perceptions of young women who drink alcoholic beverages [33]; purchasers of alcohol were described as more ‘interesting’ and ‘self-assured’ than non-drinkers. The aim of the present study was to utilise projective techniques to examine parents’ reasons and motivations for supplying alcohol to adolescents. Method Study design Respondents were presented with one of four written scenarios in which a parent supplied or did not supply alcohol to his or her child (see Box 1). Female participants were presented with a mother–daughter scenario and males with a father–son scenario. Using the online software program’s ‘random assignment’ feature, we aimed to ensure that each scenario was distributed as evenly as possible (i.e. the proportion of participants who saw each scenario was approximately 25%). Two open response items were used to investigate respondents’ understandings of the protagonists’ thoughts, motivations and intentions within the stimulus scenario provided to them. The third item required participants to respond to six statements using a fivepoint scale from ‘strongly agree’ to ‘strongly disagree’. In order to facilitate anonymity, eliminate researcher influence, minimise the impact of social desirability bias and expedite transcription, online survey software (Survey Monkey, Palo Alto, California, USA) was used to collect responses. Participants A convenience sample was recruited through the university’s professional (non-academic) staff email
Reasons for parental supply of alcohol
533
Box 1. Scenarios Female (mother–daughter) scenarios Jennifer is 43 years old. She has two children, Lucy aged 16 and Ben aged 13. On Friday afternoon when Jennifer got home from work, Lucy told her she had been invited to a birthday party on Saturday night. Lucy was excited about the party as lots of the popular girls from her class were going. Jennifer agreed that Lucy could go and said she would pick her up from the party at 11.00. On Saturday morning, Lucy asked Jennifer to take her to the shops to get a birthday present for her friend and some alcohol and snacks to take to the party. They bought a make-up kit for the friend and a four-pack of Bacardi Breezers and a bag of chips for Lucy to take to the party (scenario 1). OR They bought a make-up kit for the friend but Jennifer said no to the alcohol and bought a bottle of Coke and a bag of chips for Lucy to take to the party (scenario 2). At 8 pm, Jennifer dropped Lucy at the party and reminded her to call if there were any problems or if she wanted to come home early. Male (father–son) scenarios Mark is 43 years old. He has two children, Ben aged 16 and Lucy aged 13. On Friday afternoon when Mark got home from work, Ben told him he had been invited to a birthday party on Saturday night. Ben was excited about the party as lots of the popular boys from his class were going. Mark agreed that Ben could go and said he would pick him up from the party at 11.00. On Saturday morning, Ben asked Mark to take him to the shops to get a birthday present for his friend and some alcohol and snacks to take to the party. They bought a DVD for the friend and a four-pack of Jim Beam & Cola and a bag of chips for Ben to take to the party (scenario 3). OR They bought a DVD for the friend but Mark said no to the alcohol and bought a bottle of Coke and a bag of chips for Ben to take to the party (scenario 4). At 8 pm, Mark dropped Ben at the party and reminded him to call if there were any problems or if he wanted to come home early.
subscriber list (n = 1998). Parents of teenagers were invited to take part by clicking on a hyperlink in the email during the following seven days. The aim was to recruit 75 male and 75 female respondents during this period, with this number being driven by necessary sample size for significance testing and the budget available for the project. However, the survey was closed after four days with 180 responses (97 female, 83 male). Measures First, respondents were asked ‘What do you think Jennifer/Mark was thinking and feeling about Lucy/Ben going to the party?’ and ‘What do you think motivated Jennifer/Mark in deciding what to give Lucy/Ben to take to the party?’ Responses were allowed to range freely in order to encourage respondents to project their own understandings of parental behaviours into the
scenarios and avoid shaping the responses to predetermined themes. The third item consisted of six statements developed in consultation with experts in the field to reflect the existing state of the evidence around parental motivation for supplying alcohol to their children. Consistent with the literature, they included the potential motivators of: perception of harm minimisation (‘making sure her/his daughter/son is safe’ and ‘and educating her/his daughter/son about boundaries’) [3,34,35]; open parent–child relationships (‘making sure her/his daughter/son is having fun’ and ‘being her/his daughter’s/son’s friend as well as her/his parent’) [10,36]; and social norms (‘making sure her/his daughter/son fits in with other teens’ and ‘following what other parents would do’) [10,37]. The survey instrument was pre-tested for face validity with six parents of teenagers (three male, three female) using a think-aloud methodology [38] and pilot © 2015 Australasian Professional Society on Alcohol and other Drugs
534
S. C. Jones et al.
Table 1. Respondents’ demographics
Mean age (range) Marital status Married/de facto Separated/divorced Single Education Postgraduate Bachelor degree/diploma Secondary school Employment Full-time Part-time/casual Gross income >$2499/week $1500–2499/week
R E V I E W
Drug and Alcohol Review (September 2015), 34, 531–539 DOI: 10.1111/dar.12258
‘I think other parents might. . . .’: Using a projective technique to explore parental supply of alcohol SANDRA C. JONES1, CHRISTOPHER MAGEE2 & KELLY ANDREWS1 1
Centre for Health and Social Research (CHaSR), Mary MacKillop Institute for Health Research, Australian Catholic University, Melbourne, Australia and 2Centre for Health Initiatives, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, Australia
Abstract Introduction and Aims. A growing body of research indicates parental supply of alcohol to children and adolescents is common.The present study aimed to examine parents’ reasons for supplying alcohol to adolescents that they may find hard to articulate or not be consciously aware of. Design and Methods. A projective methodology was used, whereby respondents were asked to explain the thoughts and motivations of a gender-matched parent in a scenario in which the parent did or did not provide alcohol to their teenage child. Respondents were 97 mothers and 83 fathers of teenagers who completed an anonymous online survey. Open-ended responses were coded thematically; t-tests were used to compare quantitative responses between the scenarios. Results. The quantitative analysis found the parent who provided alcohol was less likely to be seen as making sure their child was safe and educating them about boundaries, but more likely to be seen as being a friend as well as a parent and (for females only) making sure their child fits in with others.The open-ended responses showed explanations for not providing alcohol most commonly focused on ensuring the child’s safety, obeying the law, and setting rules and boundaries, and for providing alcohol focused on ensuring the child fit in with peers and beliefs about harm minimisation. Discussion and Conclusions. The findings suggest that these respondents (parents) harboured a number of misperceptions about underage drinking and experienced conflicts in weighing up the perceived benefits of providing alcohol to their children against the risks of adolescent drinking. [Jones SC, Magee C, Andrews K. ‘I think other parents might. . . .’: Using a projective technique to explore parental supply of alcohol. Drug Alcohol Rev 2015;34:531–9] Key words: alcohol consumption, adolescent, parent, projective technique.
Introduction Parental supply of alcohol to teenagers In 2011, approximately one-third of Australian adolescent current drinkers reported that their parents gave them their last drink and two-thirds consumed their last alcoholic drink under adult supervision [1]. It is important to note that Australia does not have a legal drinking age; rather, there is a legal alcohol purchasing age of 18 years, and while it is illegal in most Australian states to provide alcohol to someone else’s child without their consent, it is not illegal for a parent to provide it to their own child. However, the national guidelines recommend that not drinking is the safest option for those
under 18 years of age and that parents should endeavour to ‘delay the initiation of drinking for as long as possible’ [2]. Although a growing body of research suggests parental supply of alcohol is common, there is relatively limited insight into the factors underlying parental supply. Studies across a range of countries and demographic groups have found that many parents perceive parental supply to be an effective harm minimisation approach [3–7]. However, recent research suggests parental supply of alcohol may be harmful rather than protective, with studies from Australia [4], the USA [8] and across both jurisdictions [9] finding parental provision of alcohol is associated with increases in drinking intentions and behaviours.
Sandra C. Jones BA, MBA, MPH, MAssessEval, PhD, Director, Christopher Magee BPsych(hons), PhD, Deputy Director, Kelly Andrews BSocSc, PGDipHealthProm, MSc(res), Program Manager. Correspondence to Prof. Sandra C. Jones, Centre for Health and Social Research (CHaSR), Mary MacKillop Institute for Health Research, Australian Catholic University, Level 5, 215 Spring Street, Melbourne, Vic. 3000, Australia. Tel: +61 (3) 9953 3709; Fax: +61 (3) 9663 5726; E-mail: [email protected] Received 14 July 2014; accepted for publication 28 January 2015. © 2015 Australasian Professional Society on Alcohol and other Drugs
532
S. C. Jones et al.
It is likely that social norms play an important role in parents’ decisions to provide alcohol to their children. In Australia, as in many countries, there is a strong belief among adolescents and parents that both adolescent alcohol consumption and parental supply of alcohol are normative [10,11]. Adolescence is a period where the nature of child– parent relationships is altered as adolescents seek more equity and autonomy [12–14]. It is plausible that these changes influence parent attitudes and behaviours regarding the supply of alcohol, with parents perceiving this as a sign of equity, trust and growing autonomy. Clearly, a variety of factors underlie parental supply of alcohol. These include, but are not limited to, social norms, perceptions of harm minimisation and changes in parent–child dynamics associated with adolescence. Although some research has investigated issues surrounding harm minimisation and monitoring, other factors such as the dynamics of child–parent relationships also need to be considered. Such research requires careful consideration of the optimal methodologies. Previous research with children and adolescents consistently reports parents as a primary source of alcohol; however, studies with parents tend to find lower rates of reporting of parental supply of alcohol than studies with children [15]. Even studies that have included children and parents from the same families find that children are more likely to report that their parents allow them to drink than parents are to report doing so [8,16,17], possibly reflecting two opposing social desirability biases. Using projective techniques to explore sensitive topics The majority of these studies have been surveys or interviews that have directly asked parents about their own behaviour, which may prompt socially desirable responses, particularly given the common—but erroneous—perception that supplying alcohol to your own children is illegal [18]. Projective techniques offer an innovative solution to overcoming these biases and may provide important insights into the reasons underlying parental supply of alcohol. These techniques are based on evidence indicating that people automatically infer the personality traits of other people and attribute agentic motives to their behaviour [19–23] and that these ascribed motives reflect their own conscious or subconscious motivations. Projective methodologies—such as picture response and third-person techniques (projective questioning)—are designed to elicit people’s underlying motivations, beliefs, attitudes and concerns, particularly those beliefs which people find hard to articulate [24] or even be consciously aware of [25]. These techniques have been successfully used to © 2015 Australasian Professional Society on Alcohol and other Drugs
explore a range of behaviours and attitudes, from fear of flying [26] to reasons for non-purchase of dry soup mixes [27]. Importantly for the present study, it has been suggested that projective techniques can reduce social desirability bias when considering behaviours with a strong social influence such as tobacco smoking and alcohol consumption [28,29]. Early studies explored perceptions of instant coffee drinkers [30] and purchasers of different brands of beer [31] and found that respondents described consumers more negatively when they were described as purchasing instant coffee in the former study and the non-leading brand in the latter. More recently, an Australian study used picture response and story response techniques to explore the food decisions of parents of preschool aged children, finding that respondents associated the decision to purchase healthy food with ‘good parenting’ and unhealthy food with ‘expediency’ [32]. In another Australian study, a similar methodology was used to investigate perceptions of young women who drink alcoholic beverages [33]; purchasers of alcohol were described as more ‘interesting’ and ‘self-assured’ than non-drinkers. The aim of the present study was to utilise projective techniques to examine parents’ reasons and motivations for supplying alcohol to adolescents. Method Study design Respondents were presented with one of four written scenarios in which a parent supplied or did not supply alcohol to his or her child (see Box 1). Female participants were presented with a mother–daughter scenario and males with a father–son scenario. Using the online software program’s ‘random assignment’ feature, we aimed to ensure that each scenario was distributed as evenly as possible (i.e. the proportion of participants who saw each scenario was approximately 25%). Two open response items were used to investigate respondents’ understandings of the protagonists’ thoughts, motivations and intentions within the stimulus scenario provided to them. The third item required participants to respond to six statements using a fivepoint scale from ‘strongly agree’ to ‘strongly disagree’. In order to facilitate anonymity, eliminate researcher influence, minimise the impact of social desirability bias and expedite transcription, online survey software (Survey Monkey, Palo Alto, California, USA) was used to collect responses. Participants A convenience sample was recruited through the university’s professional (non-academic) staff email
Reasons for parental supply of alcohol
533
Box 1. Scenarios Female (mother–daughter) scenarios Jennifer is 43 years old. She has two children, Lucy aged 16 and Ben aged 13. On Friday afternoon when Jennifer got home from work, Lucy told her she had been invited to a birthday party on Saturday night. Lucy was excited about the party as lots of the popular girls from her class were going. Jennifer agreed that Lucy could go and said she would pick her up from the party at 11.00. On Saturday morning, Lucy asked Jennifer to take her to the shops to get a birthday present for her friend and some alcohol and snacks to take to the party. They bought a make-up kit for the friend and a four-pack of Bacardi Breezers and a bag of chips for Lucy to take to the party (scenario 1). OR They bought a make-up kit for the friend but Jennifer said no to the alcohol and bought a bottle of Coke and a bag of chips for Lucy to take to the party (scenario 2). At 8 pm, Jennifer dropped Lucy at the party and reminded her to call if there were any problems or if she wanted to come home early. Male (father–son) scenarios Mark is 43 years old. He has two children, Ben aged 16 and Lucy aged 13. On Friday afternoon when Mark got home from work, Ben told him he had been invited to a birthday party on Saturday night. Ben was excited about the party as lots of the popular boys from his class were going. Mark agreed that Ben could go and said he would pick him up from the party at 11.00. On Saturday morning, Ben asked Mark to take him to the shops to get a birthday present for his friend and some alcohol and snacks to take to the party. They bought a DVD for the friend and a four-pack of Jim Beam & Cola and a bag of chips for Ben to take to the party (scenario 3). OR They bought a DVD for the friend but Mark said no to the alcohol and bought a bottle of Coke and a bag of chips for Ben to take to the party (scenario 4). At 8 pm, Mark dropped Ben at the party and reminded him to call if there were any problems or if he wanted to come home early.
subscriber list (n = 1998). Parents of teenagers were invited to take part by clicking on a hyperlink in the email during the following seven days. The aim was to recruit 75 male and 75 female respondents during this period, with this number being driven by necessary sample size for significance testing and the budget available for the project. However, the survey was closed after four days with 180 responses (97 female, 83 male). Measures First, respondents were asked ‘What do you think Jennifer/Mark was thinking and feeling about Lucy/Ben going to the party?’ and ‘What do you think motivated Jennifer/Mark in deciding what to give Lucy/Ben to take to the party?’ Responses were allowed to range freely in order to encourage respondents to project their own understandings of parental behaviours into the
scenarios and avoid shaping the responses to predetermined themes. The third item consisted of six statements developed in consultation with experts in the field to reflect the existing state of the evidence around parental motivation for supplying alcohol to their children. Consistent with the literature, they included the potential motivators of: perception of harm minimisation (‘making sure her/his daughter/son is safe’ and ‘and educating her/his daughter/son about boundaries’) [3,34,35]; open parent–child relationships (‘making sure her/his daughter/son is having fun’ and ‘being her/his daughter’s/son’s friend as well as her/his parent’) [10,36]; and social norms (‘making sure her/his daughter/son fits in with other teens’ and ‘following what other parents would do’) [10,37]. The survey instrument was pre-tested for face validity with six parents of teenagers (three male, three female) using a think-aloud methodology [38] and pilot © 2015 Australasian Professional Society on Alcohol and other Drugs
534
S. C. Jones et al.
Table 1. Respondents’ demographics
Mean age (range) Marital status Married/de facto Separated/divorced Single Education Postgraduate Bachelor degree/diploma Secondary school Employment Full-time Part-time/casual Gross income >$2499/week $1500–2499/week
