Risk factors for substance abuse among Harare northern central district high school adolescents

Abstract

The research sort to assess risk factors associated with substance abuse among Harare Northern Central District High School adolescents. The researcher observed that substance abuse is becoming a dominant element that impedes physical and psychological functioning amongst students. Therefore the research was directed towards identifying individual, environmental and lastly demographic risk factors for adolescent substance abuse. A non-experimental exploratory descriptive research design was used with 1 928 adolescents aged 1 2-1 9 who were sampled using multilevel stratified cluster random sampling from 29 schools in Harare northern central district. The SASUCRI self-report questionnaire was used as the research instrument. Data was analysed using STATA to determine both descriptive and inferential statistics. Fisher’s exact test of association, Pearson product moment correlation were used together with logical regression models. Demographic risk factors were not a significant predictor of adolescent substance abuse. Peer influence (CI 3.41 -7.1 ), p< 0.001 had the highest likelihood of influencing substance abuse. Individual and environmental risk factors for adolescent substance abuse may not necessarily mean causality but continue to interact with each other to pose as risk factors for adolescent substance abuse to the developing adolescents in Harare northern central district. Future interventions to address adolescent substance use need to focus on the context of interactions between individual and environment as risk factors seem to lie in those domains.