(Center for the Advancement of Health) -- Adolescents whose parents closely monitor their activities are less likely to use alcohol or to be in risky situations involving alcohol, suggests new research published in the American Journal of Health Behavior.

"Teens who report being consistently monitored by their parents were significantly less likely to be involved in a variety of alcohol-risk activities," write Kenneth H. Beck, Ph.D., and colleagues in the Department of Public and Community Health at the University of Maryland College Park. Therefore, they say, "Programs that show promise for instilling greater parental monitoring need to be expanded."

The study involved 444 managed-care patients ages 12 to 17 in the Washington, D.C., area. Most of the patients (79.5 percent) were African American and more than half (55.2 percent) were female.

All of the subjects answered questions about their parents' or guardians' monitoring of their activities and their own alcohol-risk behaviors, alcohol use, participation in situations that involved drinking, communication with parents about alcohol and importance placed on parents' opinions about alcohol.

The adolescents whose parents monitored their whereabouts most or all of the time were less likely than others to take part in alcohol-risk behaviors such as obtaining alcohol or drinking without their parents or guardians knowing. Those who were highly monitored also were less likely to be involved in potentially harmful situations involving alcohol, such as being with other teens who drink or going to places that their parents did not want them to go.

In addition, the researchers found that adolescents who were willing to talk to their mothers about alcohol and who valued their fathers' opinions about alcohol were less inclined to drink without their parents' knowledge.

However, parental monitoring was not associated with drinking alcohol or riding with a drinking driver during the previous 30 days or with having had five or more drinks at a time during the previous three months.

"This suggests that monitoring may help to reduce risk when adolescents are initially exposed to alcohol or while they are still using it infrequently and experimenting with it," Beck and colleagues note. "However, once drinking and being engaged in related risk situations becomes more common, monitoring alone may be insufficient to reduce the likelihood of these very high-risk behaviors."

National surveys have found that alcohol consumption ranges from 26 percent among eighth graders to more than 60 percent among 12th graders, the authors report. Additionally, in 1999, 13 percent of high school students surveyed said they had driven after drinking, and 33 percent reported that they had ridden in a car with an impaired driver.