Original Research Article
Year: 2020 | Month: April | Volume: 10 | Issue: 4 | Pages: 95-107
Knowledge and Attitude of the Adolescent Students Regarding Psychoactive Substance Abuse-Exploratory Study
Manpreet Kaur Rattan1, Narendra Kumar Sumeriya2
1Tutor, College of Nursing GMCH Chandigarh, India.
2Associate Professor, Dasmesh College of Nursing, Faridkot, India
Corresponding Author: Manpreet Kaur Rattan
ABSTRACT
Background: An Exploratory Study to Assess the Knowledge and Attitude of the Adolescent Students Regarding Psychoactive Substance Abuse.
Purpose:The purpose of the study is to find out the deficit area in knowledge and attitude of the adolescent students regarding substance abuse and to prepare pamphlet on psychoactive substance abuse.
Method: The investigator selected a sample of 150 adolescents, out which 50 were from 10th, 50 were from 11th and 50 were from 12th classes. Simple random sampling followed by lottery system was used to select the sample. The self-reported questionnaire was framed to assess the knowledge of the adolescent students regarding psychoactive substance abuse. Five point likert scales was used to assess the attitude of adolescent students
Results: The total sample consisted of 150 adolescents, out which 50 were from 10th, 50 were from 11th and 50 were from 12th classes. Most of the students appeared to have adequate knowledge about addictive substances and their harmful effects but only a minority had knowledge about the available treatment. Again only a minority had negative attitude towards substance abusers and agreed for substance use by themselves or their friends or family.
Conclusions: The following conclusions were drawn based on the findings of the study i.e the positive correlation was present between knowledge and attitude. The association between knowledge score of the adolescent students with education of father was found statistically significant. The association between attitude score of adolescent students with sex was statistically significant. Therefore, education of the father and sex of adolescents had an impact on adolescent knowledge and attitude. The study recommends the teaching programme, seminar, workshop can be concluded to improve the knowledge and attitude of adolescents students regarding psychoactive substance abuse. Pamphlet prepared by investigator to improve the knowledge and attitude.
Key words: knowledge, attitude, psychoactive substance, adolescent students.