Validity of adolescent self-report of alcohol and other drug involvement

Validity of adolescent self-report of alcohol and drug use and consequential effects and problems is examined. Validity is discussed in terms of its importance in research and clinical work. Also, results from a recent study are presented that focus on self-report temporal stability and response bias tendencies as evidence of validity of self-report. Study results indicate that the great majority of drug clinic and school teenagers gave temporally consistent reports of substance involvement and that only a small proportion of drug clinic and school subjects presented extreme response bias tendencies.