Identifying Binge Drinkers Based on Parenting Dimensions and Alcohol-Specific Parenting Practices: Building Classifiers on Adolescent-Parent Paired Data

Below:  The training set is composed of individuals with a known target behaviour (binge drinker or not) and with known variables (e.g., rules and communication). In one approach to build a classifier (on the left), the computer automatically and repeatedly devides the training (on the right). This specific approach produces a decision tree, where a path from the root to a target behaviour corresponds to successive cuts in the training set

Depending on the parenting dimension or practice, parents’ reports correctly identified the drinking behaviour of 55.8 % (using psychological control) up to 70.2 % (using rules) of adolescents. Adolescents’ perceptions were best at identifying binge drinkers whereas parents’ perceptions were best at identifying non-binge drinkers.

Of the parenting dimensions and practices, rules are particularly informative in understanding drinking behaviour. Adolescents’ perceptions and parents’ reports are complementary as they can help identifying binge drinkers and non-binge drinkers respectively, indicating that surveying specific aspects of adolescent-parent dynamics can improve our understanding of complex addictive behaviours.

Read at:   http://ht.ly/Qz5UP HT @MaastrichtU