Parallel questions were designed to ask fourth grade students and their parents about both the children's alcohol use and misuse and about the parents' alcohol use and parenting practices. These items were administered in 1992 as a pretest to 1,314 fourth grade students who were participating in a longitudinal study of child alcohol use and misuse prevention. Interviews were completed during the same year with 313 mothers and 180 fathers of the children. Complete data were obtained from 199 mother/child pairs, 172 father/child pairs, and 171 mother/father pairs. The child data were collected by classroom testing conducted by trained project staff. Although the correlations between child/parent and mother/father reports of child alcohol use were significant, they were not high. Parents and children were similar in their reports of overall mean levels of child alcohol use. There were higher correlations between parents' and children's reports of the parents' alcohol use. Comparison of the means of reported parental alcohol use by children and parents showed that children tended to underestimate the alcohol use of both parents. 4 tables and 26 references