Parental psychological control, academic self-efficacy and adolescent drinking: The roles of teacher-student relationship and sensation seeking

Parental psychological control is strongly associated with adolescents' drinking. We used self-determination theory as a conceptual framework for testing the mediating effect of academic efficacy in the association between parental psychological control and adolescent drinking behavior, and the moderating effects of teacher-student relationship and sensation seeking in this indirect process. Moreover, we tested the above model in boys and girls separately to test gender differences. A total of 1,007 junior middle school students (Mean age = 13.16 years, SD = 0.67 years, 48.2% male) in south China completed questionnaires in their classrooms. We conducted a path analysis in Mplus 8.0 to test our moderated mediation model. The results showed that: (1) the influence of parental psychological control on drinking behavior was only significant among girls; (2) academic self-efficacy significantly mediated the relationship between parental psychological control and girls' drinking behavior; (3) the first and second parts of the mediating pathways were moderated by teacher-student relationship and sensation seeking, respectively. The current findings highlight the need to address individual, family, and school factors in prevention and intervention programs for girls' drinking in adolescence.