Drug Use in Adolescence: Association with Gender, Parenting Practices, Self-Efficacy and Future Time Perspective

Luis G. A. Vinha, Nayara D M A A Khouri, Sheila Giardini Murta

The use of both illegal and legal drugs among adolescents poses a serious problem to societies worldwide. In this sense, it is fundamental to determine the risk and protective factors for drug use in different youth environments. The present study investigates the associations between drug use and gender, parenting practices, self-efficacy and future prospects for youths, based on Bandura’s Social Learning theory. The study is quantitative, cross-sectional, co-relational research. The participants were 698 students from public schools of the Federal District and the city of Goiania, Brazil. Participants responded to a questionnaire on health practices and school life (“Questionário sobre saúde e vida escolar”). The questionnaire contains questions about sociodemographic characteristics, drug use (alcohol, tobacco, inhalants, marijuana, cocaine and crack) and patterns of use, parenting practices, self-efficacy and expectations about the future. Most of the participants (54.6%) were girls in the 10 to 15 years old age group.

Almost half of the sample (47.6%) has tried alcohol and the average age of first alcohol consumption was 11.58 years old (SD= 1,98). Inhalants were the second most prevalent drug (19.5%), followed by tobacco (11%), marijuana (6.5%), cocaine (0.9%) and crack (0.4%). Boys tend to consume more drugs than girls, and their use of tobacco is significantly higher (p=0.028). Parenting practices were assessed by six subscales: demanding responsibility, emotional support, encouraging autonomy, punitive control, intrusiveness and behavioral supervision. The associations with drug use were significant, mostly for emotional support, intrusiveness (negative association) and behavioral supervision, which in part confirms the literature about the protective factors associated with the responsiveness dimension. There was a negative association between self-assertive efficacy and the use of drugs which was statistically significant between drug use and self-efficacy for obtaining parental support and self-efficacy for self-regulating learning, which converged with previous studies. There was a significant association between their future prospects and the use of illegal drugs, however the association between future plans and alcohol use was not significant.

Results confirmed the important role that parenting practices, self-efficacy and future prospects can serve as protective factors against drug use. Ergo, these variables can be applied in educational and health contexts related to youth populations.

This abstract was submitted to the 2017 Society for Prevention Research Annual Meeting.