Abstract
BackgroundThe parent-adolescent relationship plays a key role in adolescent development, including behaviour, physical health, and mental health outcomes. Studies on the parental factors that contribute to an adolescent’s dietary habits, exercise, mental health, physical harm and substance use are limited in the Middle East and North Africa region, with none in Oman. This study aims to investigate the association between parental involvement and adolescent well-being in Oman.MethodsCross-sectional data from the 2015 Global School Health Survey for Oman was analysed. The dataset consisted of 3468 adolescents. Adolescents reported on their parental involvement (checking to see if they did their homework, understanding their problems, knowing what they are doing in their free time and not going through their things without permission). Parental involvement was scored on a 20-point scale. Associations with the following dependent variables: nutrition, exercise, hygiene, physical harm, bullying, substance use, tobacco use and mental health well-being were done using Spearman’s correlations, linear and logistic regressions.ResultsThe surveyed population was 48% male, 65% aged 15 to 17 years old and 5% reported that they “most of the time or always” went hungry. Parental involvement was positively correlated with each of the dependent variables. Adolescents with higher parental involvement had significantly higher odds of good nutrition (1.391), hygiene (1.823) and exercise (1.531) and lower odds of physical harm (0.648), being bullied (0.628), poor mental health (0.415), tobacco use (0.496) and substance use (0.229).ConclusionsParental involvement plays a positive role in all aspects of adolescents’ well-being in Oman. Awareness campaigns and interventions aimed to help improve the well-being of adolescents should incorporate such positive role in their designs.
Highlights
The parent-adolescent relationship plays a key role in adolescent development, including behaviour, physical health, and mental health outcomes
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), an adolescent is an individual between the ages of 10–19 years [1]
Recent evidence indicates that a variety of parental involvement factors such as parents’ warmth, supportive parenting, parental encouragement, and overall parental involvement were associated with improved health outcomes among adolescents [11]
Summary
The parent-adolescent relationship plays a key role in adolescent development, including behaviour, physical health, and mental health outcomes. The amount and type of involvement a parent has with their child can result in a positive or negative impact on their child’s physical, mental and social development—the goal being for parents to have positive influence in their children’s lives while fulfilling the adolescent need for autonomy [43] Studies such as De Goede [12], Keijsers [22], Van Doorn [45] have explored longitudinal models to identify patterns and key factors that play a role in adolescent development [12, 13, 22, 26] which include the effect of parental influence on adolescent behaviour and maturation. Further exploration of the role of parental involvement on the health and wellness of adolescents can provide valuable insight to guide clinical practice and interventions [1, 28]
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