Parental knowledge of adolescent activities, whereabouts, and associations was assessed through adolescent responses to nine items on a 4-point scale (ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree) in which adolescents reported whether at least one parent was aware of their whereabouts after school, their activities and associations, and their involvement in various types of problem behavior, including substance use. Items included “parents know if I come home late” and “parents know if my homework is done.” Parents could have obtained this knowledge by tracking and surveillance (i.e., monitoring; Stattin & Kerr, 2000) or through parent solicitation and adolescent disclosure. Parental knowledge was assessed at all three time points, and a total score was created for each time point by summing the nine items; higher scores indicated more parental knowledge. On average, youth reported that their parents had high knowledge of their lives across all three time points: M = 30.07, SD = 4.51 (time 1); M = 30.24, SD = 4.55 (time 2); M = 29.56, SD = 5.18 (time 3). Internal consistency for this scale was .74 at time 1, .78 at time 2, and .79 at time 3.
