Protective and Resource Factors for Families with Alcohol Problems

Background:

The harmful use of alcohol is a worldwide concerned health issue. Alcohol problems not only cause individuals’ health problems, but also increase their offspring’s maladjustments. Youths of a parent with alcohol problems are more likely to develop internalizing and externalizing problems. On the other hand, evidence suggest the positive influence from individual, family, and outside family systems can help prevent the negative influence of parental alcoholism on children. However, little information is available regarding protective and resource factors of families with alcohol problems .Protective factors influence those at high risk but have no or less effect on those at low risk, whereas resource factors have effects for people at both low and high risk. This knowledge is critical for developing interventions targeting populations with different levels of risk. Moreover, given that the effect of parental alcohol problems have a broad effect on their children’s developmental outcomes, the identification of predictors for different developmental outcomes is important. Nevertheless, limited information is available about these factors for family facing alcohol problems. Based on the resilience perspective, this research investigated 1) among individual characteristics, family functioning, and extrafamilial support, what functions as resource factors and what functions as protective factors for youths of a parent with alcohol problems? 2) what factors have a broad protection across internalizing and externalizing problems?

 Methods:

The dataset, Taiwan Education Panel Survey (TEPS) which is a representative sample of Taiwanese students in junior high school was used (N=20,051, girl=9,722, 48.49%). For each of internalizing and externalizing outcomes, Stata 13.0 was used for regress analyses with 8 predictors and two control variables.

 Result:

The results suggested that, for externalizing, participation in an art group (β = -.50, p=.01) is a protective factor whereas being a girl and having high family support are resource factors. For internalizing, no protective factor is identified whereas high family support and positive enforcement parenting operate as positive influence regardless of parental alcohol problems or not (i.e. a resource factor). Most of the predictors are outcome specific, except high family support, which has a broad effect on both internalizing (β = -.09, p =.001) and externalizing problems (β = -.09, p =.001).

 Conclusion:

Our research contributes to the field of studying youth in families with alcohol problems by distinguishing protective and resource factors using a representative junior high students sample in Taiwan. Although the cultural context may shape the protective and resource mechanisms differently and the generalizability of the research results need to further examine, the predictors we used are similar to those used in the USA. The research findings suggest that positive family process is important for youths at high risk. On the basis of the research findings, when social workers help these families address alcohol problem it is important to help them to build family strengths and supportive relationships.