Predicting 13-year-olds' drinking using parents' self-reported alcohol use and restrictiveness compared with offspring's perception.

This study examined whether offspring's perception of parental frequency of alcohol use and restrictiveness towards offspring's alcohol use could be used as a substitute for parental self-reports. Offspring's perception were compared with parents' self-reported alcohol use and restrictiveness in ability to predict offspring's own alcohol use. Respondents were 924 offspring, 642 fathers and 729 mothers. Correlations between fathers' and mothers' self-reported frequency of drinking alcohol and offspring's report of parental frequency of drinking alcohol ranged from 0.55 to 0.70. Fathers' and mothers' self-reported alcohol use and restrictiveness explained less than two per cent of the variance in their offspring's alcohol use in regression analyses, while offspring's perception of parental drinking frequency and restrictiveness explained about eight per cent of the variance in offspring's alcohol use. These results represent a challenge to studies of young adolescents which interpret offspring's reports of parents' alcohol use as a surrogate measure of parents' self-reported alcohol use.