Global Journal of Medical Research, K: Interdisciplinary, Volume 22 Issue 3

Perception and Experience of Parents on Monitoring their School Going Adolescents– A Qualitative Study Conducted in Kandy District, Sri Lanka Gayani K. P. De Silva α & Devani S. Dissanayake σ Abstract- Parents remain as the gatekeepers in adolescents’ lives and need to practice parental monitoring which provides awareness of their offspring's whereabouts, activities, and companions. The study aimed to explore the perception and experiences of parents about their monitoring practice of school-going adolescents in Kandy district, Sri Lanka. A qualitative study was done using twelve focus group discussions conducted using a semi-structured mediator guide questionnaire. Thematic analysis of the discussed data was performed. Schools in the Denuwara education zone, Kandy district. One hundred and seventeen parents of school- going adolescents (14 -16year) were included using the purposive sampling method. Twelve focus groups were formed with ten parents for ten discussions in each group and nine and eight parents participated for another two. Parents were informed via their schooling adolescents and received a participant information sheet which was completed and returned if they decided to participate in the focus group discussions. Most parents understood it as an unintentional act by them while very few understood it as an intentional activity. Parents’ perception varies based on their expectations and on the sex of the adolescent child as well as the parent. Relationship status, communication, and trust were the factors predicting parental monitoring perception of parents in terms of quality and quantity of monitoring practice. Experiences mainly described strategies by which parents monitor their adolescents which included communication with the adolescent child, gaining information by direct questioning from the adolescent child’s friends or their parents and monitoring their adolescents by controlling their activities. Parents accept that their own childhood experiences play a major role in practicing monitoring as parents. Furthermore, they came across the barriers they are facing while monitoring their adolescents to the maximum. Keywords: parental monitoring, perception, experiences, adolescents. I. I ntroduction arents remain the most important figures in adolescents’ lives. They use different strategies, styles, practices, and approaches with the key Corresponding Author α : Postgraduate Institute of Medicine, University of Colombo, Sri Lanka. e-mail: pmkg8276@gmail.com Author σ : Department of Community Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of Peradeniya, Peradeniya, Sri Lanka . components of parental engagement such as monitoring, controlling, and communicating to support the development and maintain the health and wellbeing of adolescents. Parents need to practice a kind of parenting behavior that regulates and provides awareness of their offspring’s whereabouts, activities, and companions. To know about adolescents’ use of free time and the time that they are spending outside the house without the presence of their parents, the functioning of this hypothetical construct called “parental monitoring” by the parents is important. It is also a major determinant of good quality parent- adolescent relationships and vice versa (Borawski et al., 2003)and is a main domain of parenting (Strunin et al., 2015). P 1 Year 2022 Global Journal of Medical Research Volume XXII Issue III Version I ( D ) K © 2022 Global Journals Parents are the main gatekeepers of their adolescents’ lives, as they engage in many outdoor activities with strangers experiencing new challenges. As children grow older, however, parents become less likely to engage in looking and being more concerned about their adolescent kids than before. Monitoring is often highlighted as a preventional intervention strategy employed by parents to address the antisocial and delinquent behavior of their adolescent children (Laird et al., 2010). However, recent research work has broadened the conceptualization of monitoring to acknowledge both parents’ and adolescents’ contributions to the monitoring process. Even though the parental monitoring construct develops as a bidirectional concept where both adolescents and parents involve actively, it is important to assess parental monitoring perception separately. While many studies of parental monitoring assess how much adolescents perceive that they are monitored by their parent(s), only some assess how much parents perceive that they monitor their children qualitatively as well as quantitatively. The vast majority of studies on parental monitoring are quantitative by nature, which leads to a lack of in depth understanding of how parents define and perform their role as important agents in this area. Parental monitoring can also be bifurcated into monitoring by each parent (e.g., maternal and paternal monitoring activities in heterosexual couples), in which