This study centres on findings from qualitative interviews with eight Norwegian adolescents aged 16–19, comparing these to findings from five focus groups with a total of 29 parents from Norwegian and other cultural backgrounds, following the parents’ completion of a new universal parental guidance program (ICDP Youth). As parents with teenagers are increasingly seeking parental guidance, there is a need for knowledge about teenager’s thoughts and experiences related to their parent’s participation. We combine elements of content- and thematic analysis. From the perspective that teenagers’ knowledge of the intervention informs their perceptions of it, the first section of findings details what the teenagers are told by their parents- before presenting their more general reflections and feelings about their parents’ participation. The second section of findings then outlines and compares parents’ and teenagers’ experiences of the usefulness of the intervention. Findings indicate that the parents, who report substantial improvements in their own parenting competences, give very little information about the program to their teenagers, and that the teenagers are disinterested in- and remember little of what they have been told. Although the teenagers perceive that the program predominantly benefits the parent(s) and indicate that there was no need for such an intervention, they without exception report a valued increase in parental calmness (reduced negative emotional expressiveness). No negative experiences or feelings associated with their parent(s) participation were reported by the teenagers.
Høy-Petersen et al. (Sat,) studied this question.