Adolescent's knowledge and skill to refuse drugs

Abstract

Various efforts have been made to prevent adolescents from the drug use, despite their knowledge and skill to refuse drugs have never been evaluated. This study was aimed to describe the adolescents knowledge and skill to refuse drugs and their relation to the characteristics. This was an analytic study conducted in 300 students at the seventh grade aged 12-15 years old in two cities in the Special Region of Yogyakarta Province. Variables studied were adolescent's knowledge, skill to refuse drugs, and their characteristics. Data were collected using a self-reported questionnaire, then analyzed using Pearson correlation test and Spearman rho, with 95% level of significance. The findings showed that the average score of adolescent's knowledge of drugs was 66.39+17.48 and the score of skills to refuse drugs was 55.62+16.49. There was a significant relation between knowledge and skills (p = 0.05). There was no significant relation between the young adolescent's characteristics (age and sex) with their knowledge and skills to refuse the drug offered. This study concludes that the skill to refuse drugs tends to increase as the adolescents get older, and no significant relation between knowledge and skill to refuse drugs offered by sex and ages.