Parent-Adolescent Communication Scale (Sales et al., 2008)

• Populations: Adolsecent Girls
• Age ranges: 14-18
• Languages: English, Brazillian Portuguese
• Countries: Brazil; United States

Items

• In the past 6 months, how often have you and your parent(s) talked bout sex?
• In the past 6 months, how often have you and your parent(s) talked about how to use condoms?
• In the past 6 months, how often have you and your parent(s) talked about protecting yourself from sexually transmitted diseases (STDs)?
• In the past 6 months, how often have you and your parent(s) talked about protecting yourself from the AIDS virus? 
• In the past 6 months, how often have you and your parent(s) talked about protecting yourself from becoming pregnant?

Responses

Items used a 4 item ordinal response format: Never, Rarely, Sometimes, Often.

Scoring

“All items are coded so that higher values indicate more frequent sexual communication with parents. Scores on the 
five items are summed to create a scale score. Scores range from 5 to 20. The mean score for participants in our validation sample was 14.20 (SD = 4.79; Sales et al., 2008).” (Sales, Milhausen, & DiClemente, 2020)

Citations

• Sales, J. M., Milhausen, R. R., Wingood, G. M., DiClemente, R. J., Salazar, L. F., & Crosby, R. A. (2008). Validation of a parent-adolescent communication scale for use in STD/HIV prevention interventions. Health Education & Behavior, 35(3), 332-345. https://doi.org/10.1177/1090198106293524
• Gubert, F. d. A., Vieira, N. F. C., Pinheiro, Patrícia Neyva da Costa, Oriá, M. O. B., de Almeida, P. C., & de Araújo, T. S. (2013). Translation and validation of the parent-adolescent communication scale: Technology for DST/HIV prevention. Revista Latino-Americana De Enfermagem, 21(4), 851-859. https://doi.org/10.1590/S0104-11692013000400004
• Sales, J. M., Milhausen, R. R., DiClemente, R. J, (2020). Parent-Adolescent Communication Scale. In R. R. Milhausen, J. K. Sakaluk, T. D. Fischer, C. M. Davis, W. L. Yarber (Eds.), Handbook of sexuality-related measures, 4th edition (225-227). Routledge.