Another limitation was that parental history of alcohol problems was assessed only through a single question that relied on the adolescent’s perception of the alcohol use history of his or her parents. Despite evidence that this measure of parental alcohol problems has validity,40, 41 reliance on this measure could have resulted in misidentification of parental status because of a lack of awareness of problems by the adolescent or because of misinterpretation of the phrase “alcohol problem”. Thus, it is possible that some parents with a history of alcohol problems were not coded as such and that some parents were included in this group despite a lack of a genuine alcohol problem history, and interpretation of these findings must be tempered by recognition of this possibility. In addition, these data do not allow for analysis of the differential effects of biologically inherited traits and environmental influences as a result of having a parent with an alcohol problem history. Also, the use of a combined measure of impulsivity and sensation seeking (the ImpSS scale) may be less informative than separate measures of
