Our purpose in this study is to expand the existing literature to establish gender- and grade-specific influences of parental knowledge on substance use among African American adolescents, thus facilitating the development of more culturally-specific theories and preventive interventions. We do this by: 1) examining the relationship between parental knowledge and substance use among a sample of urban African American adolescents that were followed for one year, and (2) examining gender and grade level differences in this relationship. Consistent with previous theory and research, we hypothesize that higher parental knowledge will be associated with decreased substance use concurrently and one year later. Furthermore, parental knowledge will have a stronger impact on decreasing substance use rates for girls than boys, and for middle school youth than high school youth.
