To Assess the Knowledge of Substance Abuse and Prevalence of Risk Factors among the Students Studying in Selected PU Colleges of Dharwad

Today more and more fantasies of life are prevailing in this rapidly advancing society like never before due to the progressing trends in every field and the people are becoming more fascinated towards the temporary pleasures but at the same time these pleasures possess serious threats to the very living of an individual and among all the classes of society the younger people are the most vulnerable section to damage their wellbeing and hamper the overall progress. The most attractive element among all is the use of substances of different kinds in different ways which within no time leads to the imbalance in the entire functioning of a man and adolescents are at major risk of becoming preys to the devastating ill effects that these substances carry along with them. At the same time, recent wide spread influences of mass media, modeling and imitations serve as the biggest sources of pulling an adolescent towards the danger of substance abuse which he/she starts doing at any cost and under any situation ignoring the forthcoming affects.

• To assess the knowledge regarding substance abuse among students group in selected colleges of Dharwad.

• To determine the risk of substance abuse among these adolescents.

• To find the association between knowledge and identified risk factors with selected demographic variable.

A descriptive approach was used for the study. The sample consists of 120 pre-university students of different colleges in Dharwad. Students were selected by Systematic random sampling. Data was collected by administering structured interview scale.

The data was analyzed by using descriptive statistics and inferential statistics (chi-square test)

The study reveals that majority of the students have good knowledge regarding substance abuse and the level of prevalence of risk among the students is that majority (49.16%) of respondents were at low risk, 49.16% respondents were at medium risk and 1.66% had high risk of substance abuse. This indicates that majority of respondents were at medium and low risk.

The chi-square test computed between level of knowledge with respect to selected socio demographic variables showed that there is a significant relationship between the level of knowledge with socio demographic variables that are age in years (χ2=.881,p value=46.194), religion(χ2=.995,p value=36.415), educational level of the student (χ2=.205,p value=15.507), place of residence(χ2=.178, p value=15.507), total income of family per month (in rupees) (χ2=.022, p value=36.415), drug user in the family (χ2=.598, p value=15.507), source of knowledge of addictive substance (χ2=.310, p value=46.194), At 0.05 level.

Finding of the study showed that majority of the students have good knowledge regarding substance abuse and majority of respondents were at medium and low risk of substance abuse. The results of the study reveals the importance of creating awareness among the adolescents regarding the hazards of substance abuse and developing healthy life style practices through motivation, health education and improving their social environment.