Relationship Between Unsupervised Time and Participation in an Emotion Regulation Intervention and Risk Outcomes.
Wendy Hadley, David Barker, Sneha Thamotharan and 1 others
PMID 28902065WHAT IT FOUND
Adolescents with mental health symptoms who had an emotion regulation intervention and reported low unsupervised time showed the biggest delay in sexual initiation and lowest substance use.
The intervention alone did not differ from health promotion for those with high unsupervised time.
Key findings
01Participants in the emotion regulation intervention with low unsupervised time had significantly lower odds of substance use compared to other groups.
02Participants in the emotion regulation intervention with low unsupervised time had a significantly lower hazard of initiating sex compared to other groups.
03There were no significant differences in sexual initiation or substance use between the emotion regulation group with high unsupervised time and the health promotion group with low unsupervised time.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they found
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What it does not show
This is a secondary analysis from a study powered for a two-arm trial, making the four-group comparisons underpowered. The design approximates a randomized trial using propensity scores, which relies on strong assumptions about unmeasured confounders. Outcomes were based on adolescent self-report, which may be subject to recall bias or under-reporting of sensitive behaviors. The sample consisted only of adolescents with mental health symptoms, limiting generalizability to the broader population. Unsupervised time was dichotomized and may not capture the full complexity of parental monitoring.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that the emotion regulation intervention is effective for all adolescents. The benefit was only seen in those who also reported low unsupervised time. For adolescents with high unsupervised time, the emotion regulation intervention did not differ significantly from the health promotion control.