Research on the impact of parent‐child communication about sexuality has yielded contradictory and inconsistent results, perhaps because of the lack of a standard measure of the concept. Nine previously used scales which were purported to measure family sexual communication were administered to 363 college students and their parents to compare the reliability and validity of the various measures. The scales varied in their psychometric properties and seemed to be measuring the concept of family sexual communication in some substantially different ways. None of the measures correlated significantly with responses on a measure of social desirability. The scales showed very little concurrent validity, but it was unclear if this was because of the instruments or the means chosen to demonstrate validity. There were no significant correlations between the various measures of parent‐child communication and the sexual activity and contraceptive use of the college students. This is clearly an area where further instrument development is essential.