Knowledge Lability: Within- XXXX Changes in Parental Knowledge and Their Associations with Adolescent Problem Behavior.

@entity1 @entity286 @entity146 @entity6372 @entity285
Higher levels of parental knowledge about youth activities have been associated with lower levels of youth risky behavior. Yet little is known about how parental knowledge fluctuates during early adolescence and how those @entity6372 are associated with the development of @entity146 . We use the term lability to describe within- @entity1 @entity6372 in knowledge over time with higher lability indicating greater @entity6372 in knowledge from year-to-year. This longitudinal study of rural adolescents (N   =   840) investigated if change in parental knowledge across four waves of data from grades 6 to 8 is characterized by lability, and if greater lability is associated with higher youth substance use, delinquency, and internalizing problems in grade 9. Our models indicated that only some of the variance in parental knowledge was accounted for by developmental trends. The remaining residual variance reflects within- @entity1 @entity6372 around these trends, lability, and measurement and occasion-specific error. Even controlling for level and developmental trends in knowledge, higher knowledge lability (i.e., more fluctuation) was associated with increased risk for later @entity285 and @entity286 use, and for @entity1 , higher delinquency and internalizing problems. Our findings suggest that lability in parental knowledge has unique implications for adolescent outcomes. The discussion focuses on mechanisms that may link knowledge lability to substance use. Interventions may be most effective if they teach parents to consistently and predictably decrease knowledge across early adolescence.
