Relationship between psychosocial risk and protective factors with substance use among middle adolescents in Iran
Multivariate research designs in recent years have focused on inhibitions and disinhibitions of substance use as a global behavior and a multi-dimensional phenomenon with various origins in intrapersonal and interpersonal areas, as well as, in human ecological systems. Adolescent substance use, a...
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| Format: | Thesis |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
2015
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| Online Access: | http://ethesis.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/14680/1/FEM%202015%2037%20Thesis.pdf |
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| Summary: | Multivariate research designs in recent years have focused on inhibitions and
disinhibitions of substance use as a global behavior and a multi-dimensional
phenomenon with various origins in intrapersonal and interpersonal areas, as well as,
in human ecological systems. Adolescent substance use, among other risk behaviors
pertinent to this critical developmental stage within the life cycle, is initiated by an
experiment with substances as a widespread and potentially hazardous activity which
may be followed by an increased risk for future recreational or regular use all with
adverse psychological and social consequences.
Within a cross-sectional research design, and by applying the technique of
questionnaire completion, the present study aimed to determine the relationships
between concurrent psychosocial risk and protective factors and the substance use
among boy and girl middle adolescents in Iran. Furthermore, the study investigated
relations between self-report measures and extent to which the psychosocial
variables could predict membership of participants in two main groups of substance
users and non-users and in light, moderate, and heavy user sub-groups, as well as, to
compare these variables in current and ex-users. Past researchers have indicated
some of those variables related to teenage substance use in isolation. This work
attempted to study the collective influences of these variables, as their concomitant
actions were concerned, while considered priority of each in predicting changes in
the criterion variable. Psychosocial variables were grouped as risk factors and
protective factors according to their power of discriminating substance use or nonuse.
Although this was an exploratory study, a list of criteria served to determine
statistically based grouping of sample.
Research participants comprised of 594 boy (342) and girl (252) middle adolescents
aged 14 to 17 who were high-school students residing in twelve cities in Iran. These
were enrolled in by the sampling method of purposive and were assessed with a test battery consisting of Risk and Protective Factors Questionnaire for Grade 6-12
(Pride Surveys, 1983-2014), Attitudes to Drug Use Questionnaire (Pride Surveys,
1983-2014), Brief Symptoms Inventory-BSI-(Derogatis, 1983), Mediating Variables
Questionnaire-MVQ-(Kenny, Hansen, McNeal, 1994), Zuckerman-Kuhlman
Questionnaire-ZKPQ-(2002, 1993), and Adolescent Substance Use Scale (Pride
Surveys, 1983-2014). All these measures were translated into Persian language, and
the translation and back-translation process by two experts found a considerable
agreement score, while some items within the BSI, MVQ, and RPFs were modified
to adapt them with the study goals and to reduce the time for questionnaire
completion.
Except for two independent variables among others, correlations between sixteen
psychosocial variables and criterion variable showed significant. The psychological
risk and protective factors, (i.e., antisocial attitudes and behaviors, emotional
problems, sensation seeking personality attributes, positive attitudes to substance
use, and the use-refusal self-efficacy) demonstrated to have relationships with
adolescent substance use. The social independent variables (i.e., positive social
based attitudes to substance use, family risk factors of lax-parenting and neglected
monitoring, peer risk factors of gang membership and substance use, school-related
risks such as academic disengagement and community/neighborhood risks such as
neighborhood detachment) showed connections with adolescent substance use. All
these variables were distinctive enough to be entered into Discriminant Function
Analysis (DFA) equations. Running DFAs aimed to predict: 1) group membership of
light, medium, and intense substance users and non-users; 2) group membership of a
medium to severe substance users and previous users. Two classifications showed
set of variables with valid, accurate and correct grouping of participants.
Additionally, post hoc DFA showed good tabulations in predicting power of
substance use both within and between groups. Finally, a preparatory regression
model was derived by the means of which the whole psychological and social risk
and protective factors could be explored, and six out of these significantly showed to
explain the variances in the group responses to psychosocial independent variables.
The findings of study indicated the sufficiency of psychosocial risk and protective
factors, from a theoretical point of view, for explaining the inhibition and
disinhibition of substance use among the Iranian high-school students at middle age
of adolescence. The psychological versus social discriminators had powerful
influences on responses to substance use. It was concluded that despite the
precedence of discrimination of risk and protective factors over prediction of various
amounts of substance use, these variations encouraged manipulations implied by
related theories into significant changes in occasions and amounts of the use. This
provided empirical evidence for involved theories, and a hypothetical-psychosocial
profile for the present situation of middle adolescence substance use to fill a gap in
domestic literature. Both the primary and the secondary prevention programs can be
helpful in substance use stop and psycho-education to maintain the mental health and
the risk-free behaviors among the adolescents. |
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