Respondents were asked if relatives experienced alcohol dependence as defined by readily observable manifestations of alcohol disorder symptoms, an approach designed to address sensitivity issues in family history data collection (Andreasen et al. 1977; Zimmerman et al. 1988; Slutske et al. 1996). To improve validity, respondents were asked about each family member separately. We classified respondents as positive for parental history of alcoholism if they reported that their biological mother or father had alcohol problems. Validity (Hasin et al. 1997) and reliability (Dawson & Grant, 1998; Grant et al. 2003) of AUDADIS parental history of alcohol use disorder measures is excellent.
