Abstract
Parents of children with ADHD experience several difficulties while raising their children and report lower levels of knowledge about their children’s life and behaviors. A recent study found that low levels of parental knowledge mediated the association between ADHD symptoms and risk-taking behavior (RTB) in adolescents. The current study aimed to investigate this previous finding further by replicating it, by taking peer influence into account as additional social factor of importance and by extending it and also investigate the role of parental knowledge in the association between ADHD symptoms and homework problems. Three studies were performed: study 1 (N=234) replicated previous work on parental knowledge mediating the association between ADHD symptoms and RTB, study 2 (pre-registered, N=313) added peer influence, and study 3 (pre-registered, N=315) assessed whether parental knowledge mediated the association between ADHD symptoms and homework behavior. Parental knowledge consistently mediated the association between ADHD symptoms on one hand and RTB and homework problems on the other, and also predicted stronger resistance to peer influence. Because parental knowledge was repeatedly linked to ADHD-related problems, it seems promising to include parental knowledge in treatment of ADHD-related problems in adolescents, by improving the parent-child relationship. Future studies should test more directly how improvement of the parent-child relationship can be used to optimize parental knowledge, which in its turn reduces ADHD-related problems.
Highlights
Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by inattention, hyperactivity and impulsivity [1], occurring in 5.3-7.2% of the adolescents [2,3,4]
A recent study demonstrated that parental knowledge as reported by adolescents mediated the link between ADHD symptoms and general levels of risk-taking behavior (RTB) in adolescents: higher levels of ADHD symptoms were related to lower levels of parental knowledge, which were related to higher engagement in RTB [16]
The current study was a conceptual replication of the study by Pollak and colleagues (2017), which demonstrated that there is an indirect effect of parental knowledge on adolescents’ activities on the link between ADHD symptoms and risk-taking behavior
Summary
Participants were 234 late adolescents (see Table 1), recruited at their school. Inclusion was based on age: adolescents between 16 and 19 years old could participate. The scale consists of 23 items using a 4-point Likert scale, indicating the frequency of reported symptoms over the last six months. Scores potentially range from 0 to 54, with higher scores reflecting more ADHD symptoms. The sample consisted of late adolescents instead of the adult population the scale was designed for, internal consistency was good, α = .85. Participants indicated how often they engaged in this behavior on a 5-point Likert scale, ranging from never to every week. An example of an item is “Do your parents know who you have as friends in your free time?”. Both internal consistency and test-retest reliability of this scale were good [13].
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