The authors argue that the ways in which adolescents make meaning of substance use has been neglected. A four-construct assessment battery is described, including measures of moral- judgment stage, social-knowledge domain categorization of substance-use behaviors, ethical relativism, and interpersonal problemsolving. The methods used in assessing attitudes toward the socio-moral aspects of substance use include oral interviews, card sorts, objective questionnaires, and videotaped family conflict resolutions. A second example of the phenomenological approach presented is the study of adolescent risk-taking, which is derived from a theoretical model posited by Levitt, Selman, and Richmond (1991). It is operationalized, assessed, and measured with objective questionnaires, oral interview questions, and videotaped family interactions. This approach offers new insight into the more traditional means of understanding adolescent substance use and a potential source for designing prevention and intervention programs. Additional research is necessary to provide evidence of the utility of the constructs and measures of the phenomenological-psychological aspects of substance use. The effort described in this paper is an attempt to begin a dialog between cognitive-structural development psychology and the fields of substance abuse research, prevention, and treatment. 39 references