Participants were asked separate questions about how easy it is for them to talk to their fathers, stepfathers, mothers and stepmothers about things that really bother them. This item did not measure substance use-specific parental communication but general parent-child communication. Five response choices were provided (0=don’t have or see this person; 1=very difficult; 2=difficult; 3=easy; 4=very easy). The highest response to the questions about ease of communication with fathers and stepfathers was selected to represent the level of “father communication”. If a participant did not respond or responded “0” to both items, the resulting “father communication” variable was coded as missing. A similar process was used to compute the variable “mother communication.” The resulting father and mother communication variables were dichotomized and recoded as “very easy/easy” and “difficult/very difficult”).
