Structural Relations of Parenting, Novelty, Behaviorial Problems, Coping Strategies, and Addiction Potential

Background A fundamental question in addiction tendency is which factors propel people toward substance use. Various studies found that unsafe fields of interest are a criterion for the adoption of substance use and addicts are people with unsafe development in various areas that propel them toward substance use. Objectives The aim of this study was to model, assay, and plan a model to reveal the structural relations between psychological factors, including parenting, novelty seeking, problem behavior, and coping strategies, for addiction potential. Patients and Methods Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to evaluate the relationship between parenting styles and addiction potential with mediator variables, namely novelty, coping strategies, and behavioral problems, among 572 high school students (328 male, 244 female), randomly selected in Mashhad, Iran. Data were collected using the parenting style questionnaire, temperament, and character inventory, the Achenbach youth self-report scale, the coping inventory for stressful situations, and the Iranian addiction potential scale (IAPS). AMOS-16 software was applied for evaluating the proposed model. The final model, achieved after deleting non-significant paths and the co-varying of some errors, has favorable fitness indexes (CFI = .90, RMSEA = .07). Results The study found significant relationships between parenting styles and addiction potential with mediator variables, although the most of the purposed paths between permissive parenting style and other variables were not significant. Conclusions According to standard coefficients, emotion-oriented, problem-oriented, and avoidance-oriented coping strategies, as well as behavior problems, respectively, have the largest effect on addiction potential.