Development of a parent questionnaire for use in assessing adolescent drug abuse

The development and initial psychometric properties of a new parent questionnaire for assessing adolescent drug abuse are described. The Personal Experience Inventory-Parent Version (PEI-PV) is intended to provide a standardized parent report as a companion measure to the adolescent sell-report instrument, the Personal Experience Inventory. The PEI-PV addresses problems associated with the child's drug abuse and psychosocial factors and parenting practices that may underlie their drug involvement. Reliability and validity data are reported for two groups of mothers, 205 of whom had a child referred for an evaluation for drug treatment and 185 from a community sample. The structure and scope of the PEI-PV was supported by scale intercorrelation data; most scales had a proportion of unique, reliable variance greater than 20%. Estimates of the scale's internal consistency were found to be comparable to those of established parent questionnaires, and the observed differences between the clinic-referred and community samples were consistent with expectations. Significant convergence of mothers' reports to those of their child was obtained for nearly three-quarters of the PEI-PV scales, including moderate agreement between mother and child on the drug involvement severity scales. However, mothers tended to underreport their child's level of drug involvement and resulting problems compared to the child's self-report. The study results suggest that the PQ is associated with favorable evidence that the scales measure what they are intended to measure.