Spanish society has changed all the parameters that define the family (the age of

parenthood, the number of children, work demands, educational standards, etc.), while the

functions remain the same.

Impulsiveness is related to maladjusted behaviour patterns and numerous mental

disorders. In the concrete case of children and adolescents, impulsiveness is related to their

scarce perception of risk and their tendency to become involved in maladjusted behaviour

patterns (drinking alcohol, smoking, not respecting traffic regulations, addiction to Internet,

grooming, sexting, etc.), as well as bad results at school.

Considering the importance and the impact that behaviour patterns of risk and low

school performance can have on both a social level and on the development of these young

people, this thesis aims to explain to what extent the aforesaid functionality and dynamics of the

family intervene in an adolescent’s impulsiveness, and to give evidence of the type of relation

established between impulsiveness and risky behaviour patterns involving the new

technologies, the consumption of drugs and road safety, as well as the influence of other

variables such as gender, habitat (urban/rural) or the family structure.

This study looks at the relation between functionality (measured by the family Apgar

test), the aforementioned family dynamics (measured by a scale of our own invention), and

impulsiveness (measured by the Barratt BIS-11 test). To this end, a survey including these

scales was carried out on 4,673 adolescents from Castile & León between 13 and 18 years of

age who were attending school in the academic years 2013-2014 and 2014-2015. In the final

sample, only the completed surveys were analysed, with a total of 3,343 questionnaires. This

enabled us to estimate our results with a proportion of 50%, a confidence interval of 95.5%, and

a margin of error in bilateral contrast of 2%.