Explaining Cross-National Youth Substance Use Through Modernization Approach: A Study of Students in Eight Post- … (original) (raw)
Related papers
POLICING IN CENTRAL AND EASTERN …, 2010
Purpose: The purpose of this research was to compare mean levels of self-reported youth substance use measures in eight post-Yugoslav entities in an effort to test the applicability of modernization approach in predicting substance use levels at the cross-national level. Design/methodology/approach: 2,178 first- and second-year social science students in ex-Yugoslav entities were surveyed with the aim of identifying similarities and differences in mean levels of tobacco, alcohol, and marihuana use. Findings: Three self-reported substance use measures showed high internal consistency and factor analysis yielded a one-dimensional structure. Cross-national comparisons showed that socioeconomically most developed entities (e.g., Slovenia and Croatia) had highest means on composite substance use measure, and Kosovo had the lowest, as expected based on the modernization approach. Research limitations/implications: The study results lend support to the modernization approach as being largely successful in explaining cross-national differences in youth substance use levels. Future studies should employ larger representative samples to allow generalisability. In addition, a larger array of deviance measures ought to be employed in the future. Practical implications: The study has implications for both researchers and the policy makers in post-Yugoslav entities. Specifically, it shows that next to socioeconomic development, additional explanations and factors (e.g., predominant religious context, historical context) should be identified when explaining cross-national substance use differences among adolescents. Originality/value: The study extends the understanding of cross-national substance use levels in post communist entities since quantitative data from the observed environments is largely missing and empirical studies largely exclude post-Yugoslav entities from their sampling frame.
Substance Use among European Students: East – West Comparison between 1995 and 2011
Central European Journal of Public Health
Aim: The aim of the study was to investigate long-term trends differences in student substance misuse between countries of former Eastern Bloc (FEB) and Western Europe (WEST). Overall data on student substance misuse gathered in five waves of the European School Survey Project on Alcohol and other Drugs (ESPAD) conducted between 1995 and 2011 were pooled and analysed. Findings were compared between FEB and WEST countries at the five time-points of data collection. Methods: Over 396,000 of 16 years old students from thirteen FEB and thirteen WEST countries completed anonymous ESPAD questionnaires. The following data were compared by Wilcoxon test: proportion of students with experience of taking a legal drug at less than 13 years of age (early onset), regular tobacco use, emerging signs of alcohol abuse, and differences in prevalence of illegal drug use. Results: Significant differences in selected variables were found in the early onset of legal and illegal drug use between FEB and WEST countries. On the contrary, no significant differences were present when several random samples from the pool of 26 participating countries were drawn and compared. This strengthens our confidence that the differences between FEB and WEST countries did not occur due to chance. Conclusions: Student drug use in FEB countries tended to follow the trends and patterns of legal and illegal drug use in WEST countries with some time lag. At the times of decline in use of both, legal and illegal substances in the WEST countries, the FEB countries were experiencing increase and later on stabilisation in drug use. The possible explanatory factors including the impact of profound political, cultural and socioeconomic changes following the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989 were discussed. The implications of these trends and suggestions for drug prevention strategies were outlined.
BMJ open, 2015
The community of residence (ie, urban vs rural) is one of the known factors of influence on substance use and misuse (SUM). The aim of this study was to explore the community-specific prevalence of SUM and the associations that exist between scholastic, familial, sports and sociodemographic factors with SUM in adolescents from Bosnia and Herzegovina. In this cross-sectional study, which was completed between November and December 2014, the participants were 957 adolescents (aged 17 to 18 years) from Bosnia and Herzegovina (485; 50.6% females). The independent variables were sociodemographic, academic, sport and familial factors. The dependent variables consisted of questions on cigarette smoking and alcohol consumption. We have calculated differences between groups of participants (gender, community), while the logistic regressions were applied to define associations between the independent and dependent variables. In the urban community, cigarette smoking is more prevalent in girls...
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 2016
Substance use and misuse (SUM) in adolescence is a significant public health problem and the extent to which adolescents exhibit SUM behaviors differs across ethnicity. This study aimed to explore the ethnicity-specific and gender-specific associations among sports factors, familial factors, and personal satisfaction with physical appearance (i.e., covariates) and SUM in a sample of adolescents from Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. In this cross-sectional study the participants were 1742 adolescents (17-18 years of age) from Bosnia and Herzegovina who were in their last year of high school education (high school seniors). The sample comprised 772 Croatian (558 females) and 970 Bosniak (485 females) adolescents. Variables were collected using a previously developed and validated questionnaire that included questions on SUM (alcohol drinking, cigarette smoking, and consumption of other drugs), sport factors, parental education, socioeconomic status, and satisfaction with physical appearance and body weight. The consumption of cigarettes remains high (37% of adolescents smoke cigarettes), with a higher prevalence among Croatians. Harmful drinking is also alarming (evidenced in 28.4% of adolescents). The consumption of illicit drugs remains low with 5.7% of adolescents who consume drugs, with a higher prevalence among Bosniaks. A higher likelihood of engaging in SUM is found among children who quit sports (for smoking and drinking), boys who perceive themselves to be good looking (for smoking), and girls who are not satisfied with their body weight (for smoking). Higher maternal education is systematically found to be associated with greater SUM in Bosniak girls. Information on the associations presented herein could be discretely disseminated as a part of regular school administrative functions. The results warrant future prospective studies that more precisely identify the causality among certain variables.
Substance Abuse: Risk Factors for Turkish Youth
Objective: Substance abuse amongst youth has been growing in developed and developing nations, including Turkey. This growth is related to a number of factors, not the least of which are forces associated with development, globalization, and youth culture. The identification of risk factors for youth substance abuse for particular populations is an important approach to the development of prevention and intervention strategies. Methods: We analyzed the data from a survey of 31,272 youth ages 14 to 18 years enrolled in high schools in Istanbul that covered the use of various substances as well as a number of demographic, socioeconomic, cultural, psychopathological, and psychosocial risk factors. Our data consisted of answers to similar questions that were asked in European School Survey Project (ESPAD), Youth in Europe (YIE), and Monitoring of the Future Survey and the National Household Survey in USA. We used binary logistic regression analyses to generate risk profiles for each of the following categories of lifetime use: tobacco, alcohol, cannabis, other illicit drugs, and multiple (two or more) other illicit drugs. Results: We identified statistically significant risk profiles for these different substance categories. All the different risk factor categories contributed variably to the use of gateway drugs (tobacco, alcohol, marijuana, and other illicits), but the multiple use of other illicit drugs was associated primarily with a narrower set of psychopathological (suicidality, irritability, and antisocial problems) and psychosocial variables (family substance abuse and peer influence). Conclusions: These risk profiles share some commonality with those found amongst other populations. However, these unique risk profiles for Turkish youth can be useful in developing primary and secondary preventive interventions to address the growing substance use and abuse problems. Crosssectional and longitudinal studies, focusing on time trends and risk factors of substance use in youth
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 2015
Ethnicity and religion are known to be important factors associated with substance use and misuse (SUM). Ethnic Bosniaks, Muslims by religion, are the third largest ethnic group in the territory of the former Yugoslavia, but no study has examined SUM patterns among them. The aim of this study was to explore the prevalence of SUM and to examine scholastic-, familial-and sport-factors associated with SUM in adolescent Bosniaks from Bosnia-and-Herzegovina. The sample comprised 970 17-to-18-year-old adolescents (48% boys). Testing was performed using an previously validated questionnaire investigating socio-demographic-factors, scholastic-variables, and sport-factors, cigarette smoking, alcohol drinking, simultaneous smoking and drinking (multiple SUM), and the consumption of other drugs. The 30% of boys and 32% of girls smoke (OR = 1.13; 95% CI = 0.86-1.49), 41% of boys and 27% of girls are defined as harmful alcohol
Vojnosanitetski pregled, 2014
Backround/Aim. Adolescence is the period of greatest risk of starting to use substances: cigarette smoking, alcohol and illicit drugs. In the first decade of this millennium substance use among adolescents has increased. The aim of this study was to explore the prevalence of substances use among adolescents and its correlation with social and demographic factors. Methods. The study was conducted among adolescents in Novi Sad during 2010-2011 and included 594 conveniently selected adolescents (275 male and 319 female), aged 15-19 years. A special questionnaire was used and statistical analysis performed in SPSS17. The correlation between parameters was evaluated by the Pearson correlation method and frequency differences were analysed using ?2 test and starting level was p < 0.05. Results. The prevalence of substance use was statistically higher in males. Cigarettes were smoked daily by 21.45% males and 15.67% females (p < 0.01), alcohol was consumed by 81.6% males and 69.11% f...
Journal of Education Culture and Society, 2020
The aim of this paper is to examine the prevalence of substance use among fi rst-year stu-dents at the University of Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and to determine differences with regard to the socio-demographic characteristics of the participants. The study was conducted in June 2012 by teaching assistants at the Department of Social Work, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Mostar, in collaboration with social work students who were previously trained to conduct the research. The study included 420 participants from six faculties. The research is designed to determine which substances are most frequently used among fi rst-year students and to determine whether there are differences in the frequency of alcohol consumption, smoking and drug use among students with regard to their socio-de-mographic characteristics. The results show that the most frequently used substance among students is alcohol; cigarettes are in second place and marijuana (as the only drug...