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Being lonely or using substances with friends? A cross-sectional study of Hungarian adolescents’ health risk behaviours

BACKGROUND: Studying adolescents’ health risk behaviours is oddly significant in Central and Eastern European countries, where the prevalence of smoking and drinking among 14–18 year old students is significantly high. The goal of our study is to examine the role of social psychological and social b...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Varga, Szabolcs, Piko, Bettina F.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2015
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4637146/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26547688
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-015-2474-y
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author Varga, Szabolcs
Piko, Bettina F.
author_facet Varga, Szabolcs
Piko, Bettina F.
author_sort Varga, Szabolcs
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Studying adolescents’ health risk behaviours is oddly significant in Central and Eastern European countries, where the prevalence of smoking and drinking among 14–18 year old students is significantly high. The goal of our study is to examine the role of social psychological and social behavioural variables in health risk behaviours among Hungarian adolescents. METHODS: Our sample was comprised of three high schools of Debrecen (the second largest city of Hungary). In all, 501 students filled in the questionnaire from 22 classes (14–22 years old). Students aged above 18 years were excluded for the purpose of the study, giving a total sample size of 471 high school students. Descriptive statistics and binary logistic regression analyses were conducted. RESULTS: According to our results (1) social behavioural factors (namely, smoking and alcohol use of the best friend and peer group) proved to be better predictors of adolescents’ health risk behaviours as compared to the included social psychological attributes (2); among the latter ones, loneliness and shyness were negatively related with both smoking and drinking, while competitiveness was a predictor of drinking prevalence among boys. CONCLUSIONS: The findings suggest that social behavioural factors, including smoking and drinking of friends, are oddly important predictors of Hungarian adolescents’ health risk behaviours. According to our results, health policy should pay more attention to peer norms related to smoking and drinking during school health promotion. Developing health protective social norms may be an indispensable component of effective health promotion in high schools.
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spelling pubmed-46371462015-11-09 Being lonely or using substances with friends? A cross-sectional study of Hungarian adolescents’ health risk behaviours Varga, Szabolcs Piko, Bettina F. BMC Public Health Research Article BACKGROUND: Studying adolescents’ health risk behaviours is oddly significant in Central and Eastern European countries, where the prevalence of smoking and drinking among 14–18 year old students is significantly high. The goal of our study is to examine the role of social psychological and social behavioural variables in health risk behaviours among Hungarian adolescents. METHODS: Our sample was comprised of three high schools of Debrecen (the second largest city of Hungary). In all, 501 students filled in the questionnaire from 22 classes (14–22 years old). Students aged above 18 years were excluded for the purpose of the study, giving a total sample size of 471 high school students. Descriptive statistics and binary logistic regression analyses were conducted. RESULTS: According to our results (1) social behavioural factors (namely, smoking and alcohol use of the best friend and peer group) proved to be better predictors of adolescents’ health risk behaviours as compared to the included social psychological attributes (2); among the latter ones, loneliness and shyness were negatively related with both smoking and drinking, while competitiveness was a predictor of drinking prevalence among boys. CONCLUSIONS: The findings suggest that social behavioural factors, including smoking and drinking of friends, are oddly important predictors of Hungarian adolescents’ health risk behaviours. According to our results, health policy should pay more attention to peer norms related to smoking and drinking during school health promotion. Developing health protective social norms may be an indispensable component of effective health promotion in high schools. BioMed Central 2015-11-07 /pmc/articles/PMC4637146/ /pubmed/26547688 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-015-2474-y Text en © Varga and Piko. 2015 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Research Article
Varga, Szabolcs
Piko, Bettina F.
Being lonely or using substances with friends? A cross-sectional study of Hungarian adolescents’ health risk behaviours
title Being lonely or using substances with friends? A cross-sectional study of Hungarian adolescents’ health risk behaviours
title_full Being lonely or using substances with friends? A cross-sectional study of Hungarian adolescents’ health risk behaviours
title_fullStr Being lonely or using substances with friends? A cross-sectional study of Hungarian adolescents’ health risk behaviours
title_full_unstemmed Being lonely or using substances with friends? A cross-sectional study of Hungarian adolescents’ health risk behaviours
title_short Being lonely or using substances with friends? A cross-sectional study of Hungarian adolescents’ health risk behaviours
title_sort being lonely or using substances with friends? a cross-sectional study of hungarian adolescents’ health risk behaviours
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4637146/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26547688
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-015-2474-y
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