Parent-Adolescent Interactions Project – Biobehavioral Development Lab

Parent-Adolescent Interactions Project

Purpose

Ever notice how sometimes conversations between parents and (pre)teens change a lot, even day-to-day? And you know that a lot is going on in both parents’ and (pre)teens’ lives that affect how each person acts and feels during these conversations. Healthy relationships are one of the most important factors in supporting mental health and wellness, but they’re also a moving target, especially the parent-adolescent relationship during the (pre)teen years.

We’ve designed a study to help get down to the bottom of how parent-adolescent relationships affect the mental health and wellbeing of children. We think that it has something to do with “synchrony” why is how parents and adolescents feel, act, and even biologically (think stress hormones, heart rate, breathing) respond together – in similar ways or in opposite ways (or don’t actually ‘sync up’ at all!). We also think that patterns of how parents and adolescents sync up – and whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing – depends on the context, the kinds of conversations you’re having, how often you have similar conversations in similar contexts, and a bunch of other factors. This research study will help us answer important questions like what kinds of ‘syncing up’ are good vs. bad? In what contexts? And for whom?

Ultimately, the knowledge that we gather through this study will be used to develop ways to help improve parent-adolescent relationship quality and adolescents’ well-being.

Eligible Participants

Must be a two-parent family with a mother, a father, and an adolescent child aged 9-13 years, all able to speak English. We hope to enroll 120 families.

Interested already? Click here to fill out the eligibility survey! It should take 10-15 minutes to fill out. This is because it is important to the research design that we enroll two-parent families that have children who range in age between 9 and 13 and are balanced for biological sex at birth, race/ethnicity, and risk for mental health and behavioral problems. The eligibility questionnaire will include your preferred contact information, demographic information about you and your family, including your age, race/ethnicity, information about your family size and who lives in the home, daily schedule, and general indications of mental and behavioral health problems. This information will be used to select a diverse and balanced set of families.

What would you do if you’re enrolled?

Our study includes two visits – one with the mother and teen, and one with the father and teen. They should occur about 1 week apart. We will tell your family if the mother-teen or father-teen visit should be first. Each visit will take about 2 hours, and we would like them to start between 4pm and 6pm any day of the week. Why? Well first, this timing is less likely to interfere with school schedules so you can choose to participate on a weekday or weekend. And also, its better for the science: We will be measuring hormones, the levels of which increase in the morning and then decrease over the day – by measuring the hormones at about the same time of day for all of our participants we will be able to compare hormone levels and changes better.

Each parent and teen will be paid $30 for each lab visit ($15/hour), in cash at the end of the lab visit. 

Our study also includes a daily diary part, which is a ~10-minute survey at the end of each day for 14 days. Each parent and teen will be paid $5 for each daily diary survey they fill out, paid with an Amazon gift card for up to $70 (if all daily diary surveys were completed) at the end of the two-week period. If a day is missed, we will remind you to complete it (even the next morning), but you won’t be paid for any days that you do not complete the diary.

Daily Diary

The daily diary surveys are short questionnaires that you can fill out on any device – we will text or email them to you at a similar time each night, between dinner and when you go to sleep. They will take less than 10 minutes to complete, and will ask you about how you felt during the day, and about interactions you had during the day with your mom and dad (teens) or teen (mom and dad).

Lab Visits

The lab visits will include the following six parts, that we will describe next. 

  1. Questionnaires
  2. Discussion Tasks
  3. Video and Biofeedback Sensor recordings
  4. Saliva Samples
  5. Hair Samples
  6. Interview

Questionnaires:

Parents: We will ask you about your demographic information, your and your child’s behavioral and mental health and your relationship and interactions with your child.

Teens: We will ask you about your thoughts and feelings, behavioral and mental health, and your relationship and interactions with your parents.

You will fill out questionnaires in separate rooms.

Discussion Tasks:

There are two discussion tasks, five-minutes each. One is about a topic that families typically have some conflict about and the other is about something fun your family could do together.

Video and Biofeedback Sensor Recordings:

We will record you during those discussion tasks. Recordings include:

  • Video – so that we can later code for emotional and behavioral patterns and content that are general across participants.
  • Biofeedback/sensors – we will fit you with a heart rate and respiration monitor (a strap around your rib cage, and sensors on your bottom left rib, bottom right rib, and just under your right clavicle) and skin perspiration (sweat) monitor (on the first and second finger on your non-dominant hand). These sensors don’t hurt to attach, although sometimes the gel we use might be a bit cold. These each provide information about how excited or stressed you get during the tasks. We will also be able to tell if you and your family member are “on the same page” in terms of your biological responses during the conversations in addition to your emotions and behaviors.

Saliva Samples:

We will ask you (parents and teens) to provide four saliva samples throughout the visit. 10 minutes prior to the first sample, will be asked to rinse your mouth out to prep for the samples. The saliva collection is easy – you just put the saliva collection aid into the tube we give you, tilt your head forward and let saliva pool in the bottom of your mouth, under your tongue. Just thinking about saliva can help you produce more! Next you will put the collection aid into your mouth under your tongue and let the saliva flow into it without spitting or blowing or forcing the saliva into the tube because that makes bubbles that will make it more difficult to know when you’ve provided enough. It typically takes about 3 minutes to provide enough saliva.

The saliva samples will be used to measure epigenetic marks – which tell us about how environments can change gene expression, and your cortisol, testosterone, and dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA), as these hormones have also been linked to mental health, behavior, and relationships.

Hair Samples

Teens only: We will collect a small sample of your hair during the laboratory visit. A trained research assistant will use the tips of the scissors to weave apart sections of your child’s hair from the back of your head (20 to 30 strands per section). The research assistant will isolate about 5 to 6 small sections and slowly snip the hair, cutting close to the scalp.

Nervous? We get it. It’s totally normal to feel nervous about this part, but we purposely use the technique described above that we are not cutting a large amount of hair from any one spot – there will not be any noticeable bare spots. If you have a hair style that we think there might be some spots showing (like in very short hair) then we will tell you whether or not there could be noticeable spots. You can decline the hair sample (some people decline, others are like Meh, it’ll grow back quickly). The final product should have about 100 strands of hair, which is about half as wide as a pencil eraser (or the size of a lock of hair that you might keep in a baby book). You can check out some videos here to see how this goes if you’re curious.

The hair sample will then be used to measure cortisol, testosterone, and dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA), estradiol, and progesterone as these hormones can be used to measure pubertal development and have also been linked to mental health, behavior, and relationships.

Interview

After the discussion tasks, you and your family member will each go to separate rooms and complete an interview with a research assistant. The interview is just to get your thoughts about how the discussion tasks went, and how they may or may not connect with your daily interactions together.

Why should you participate?

Potential impacts of research on parent-adolescent relationships

Although this project may not benefit you directly, knowledge about how parent-adolescent relationships develops, get under the skin, and how it affect adolescents’ adjustment is very important, and the information gathered in this study is intended to be used to develop ways to help improve parent-adolescent relationship quality and adolescents’ well-being. Research propels us forwards towards finding solutions and deeper understandings within these areas. The relationship between parent-adolescence and the impacts on a child’s wellbeing is surely a universal and worthy concept to learn more about.

Compensation

Each parent in your family will be compensated a total of $100 for participating, and your child will be compensated $130 because they will complete two lab visits. Together, this means your family will be compensated $330 to complete the study. Payments will be distributed via cash or amazon gift cards in three installments.

Interested in participating?

Click here to fill out the eligibility survey! It should take 10-15 minutes to fill out.

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