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TABLE 2-6: SIGNIFICANT INFLUENCES OF INDEPENDENT VARIABLES ON EVENT-SAMPLED PEER INTERACTIONVARIABLES, USING LOGISTIC REGRESSIONSource: Hipwell et al (2004).Silburn and Zubrick (1996) used information from the Western Australian Child HealthSurvey, to determine health impacts associated with different family environments, structuresand disciplinary styles. Reported mental health problems related to categories of disorderssuch as anxiety and depressive, conduct disorder, attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder(ADHD) and somatisation disorder, identified by the parent or teacher on the AchenbachChild Behaviour Checklist within a clinical range. Silburn and Zubrick (1996) noted that datafrom these studies should be interpreted with caution as they represented a correlation not acausal linkage.‘[The survey] merely provides a ‘snap-shot’ of the average mental health status ofthe children who are living in different family living arrangements at a particularpoint in time. These findings tell us nothing about the longer term outcomes forindividual children…..The mechanism whereby children in non-traditional familyforms come to have higher risks for adverse mental health and poorereducational outcomes requires a consideration of other factors’.Interestingly, statistical analysis of the Western Australian Child Health Survey data set onlyshowed a statistically significant relationship between three family environment measures.These related to the family type, parental disciplinary style as well as the level of familydiscord. No statistically significant association was shown with family income in predictingmental health status. Table 2-7 shows the odds ratios from family environment associatedwith the mental health problems.18