Hong Kong Children's Posited “Vulnerability” to Social Influence on Substance Abuse

Abstract

A survey of 2,051 pupils between Grade 4 and Grade 7 in 2003 showed that social influence or encouragement to substance use was a significant determinant of substance use risk, controlling for prior substance use and other backgrounds. Contextual stress or unhappiness among parents, classmates, and other people around operated jointly with social influence to promote substance use risk. This finding accords with a dovetail model about the extra influence due to the joining of force and receptivity to the force. Further research is necessary to corroborate the present findings obtained from a place and a time.

Keywords:

• strain theory
• opportunity theory
• person-environment fit
• social influence
• normalization
• contextural stress

Notes

²The nine criteria for causation published by Sir Bradford Hill were designed to help researchers and clinicians to determine whether a finding was a cause of a particular disease or outcome or merely associated with it. The nine criteria, which include strength of association, consistency among studies, temporality, biological gradient, biological plausibility, coherence, specificity, experimental evidence, and analogy are defined below. (Hill, A. B. (1965). The environment and disease: associations or causation? Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine, 58, 295–300.) Editor's note.