How adolescents perceive themselves and their level of development can be argued to be particularly important in understanding the interplay between markers of maturity, family-level stress and substance use. Self-ratings using a questionnaire index of pubertal development can be preferable for use with non-clinical samples (Hayward, 2003) while adolescents’ social cognitions about family relationships operate as a mechanism through which family stress effects psychological adjustment (Harold & Conger, 1997). Adolescents are also likely to be the best reporters of their own substance use. However, a reliance on self report may have inflated the observed associations between study constructs.
