Adolescent reports were used to assess parental problem drinking. The nine-item Short Michigan Alcoholism Screening Test (SMAST; Crews & Sher, 1992) measured adolescents' perceptions of maternal (M-SMAST) and paternal (F-SMAST) alcohol abuse problems. An example item is “Has your mother [or father] ever gotten into trouble at work because of drinking?” Dichotomous response options scale items were summed to create total scores for mothers (α = .80) and fathers (α = .86). Total scores were positively skewed and were therefore logarithmically transformed. Previous research has found the SMAST to be reliable and valid across multiple samples (Crews & Sher, 1992). Research also has shown that adolescent reports of parental problem drinking are strongly correlated with both mothers and fathers perceptions (Crews & Sher, 1992), highlighting the validity of these reports.
