The adolescent self-report of having witnessed parental drunkenness was a stronger predictor of maladjustment than was parental alcohol report. Adolescent report of seeing their parents drunk was associated with both parental report of drinking and outcome, and all effect sizes were reduced when this variable was added to the analyses. Hence, it is likely that seeing one's parents drunk mediates a non-trivial part of the association between parental alcohol use and school adjustment. One interpretation of this would be that being with intoxicated parents is harmful in itself, and that this question measures the subjective burden of having an alcoholic parent. Alternatively, this question may tap into variation in alcohol problems that is not captured by our parental alcohol measure. However, unlike with parent-reported measures, associations between predictors and outcome both reported by the adolescents may also partially reflect mood-congruent response consistency.
