Family communication constraints as health intervention challenge: Parent-child conversation about indoor tanning

Health communication scholars have begun to focus on family interaction as a site for intervention. Such communication is particularly relevant to indoor tanning because of its negative consequences and the significance of parental influences.

The goal of this formative research is to describe the nature of parent-child communication on health issues as illustrated with indoor tanning, and identify the perceived barriers for effective parent-child communication on the topic.

Six focus groups of teenagers, ages 14-17, and two focus groups of parents were convened to yield ideas about the extent to which parent-child conversation in general, and about indoor tanning specifically, occur, and the perceived barriers to these conversations. Transcripts of the focus groups were analyzed by two independent coders.

Our results showed that all participants generally agreed that talking with their family about health topics can be important; however, discussions on health topics were generally sporadic. Such conversations did not appear to occur comfortably even though the majority of participants reported positive attitudes toward family conversations about health. These conversations mostly relied on specific event triggers. In the absence of these triggers, parent-child conversation is scant due to low personal relevance and/or self-efficacy, and a perceived lack of credible information on indoor tanning.

Intervention to frame the topic as relevant to families' everyday lives and to improve parent and child perceptions of self-efficacy regarding talking about health topics such as indoor tanning seems a fruitful next step.