A Quantitative Exploration of Attitudes Out of Line with the Prevailing Norms Toward Alcohol, Tobacco, and Cannabis Use Among European Students

Abstract

The study examines groups of 15–16-year-old students whose attitudes toward drug use are out of line with the prevailing norms. It analyzes data from eight countries from the 2003 European School Survey on Alcohol and Other Drugs (ESPAD): Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, France, Malta, Slovenia, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. In those countries, 22,900 15–16-year-old pupils answered the ESPAD questionnaire. Groups of subjects whose responses are far removed from the modal value are sought and studied. The aim is to explore “rare answers” compared to what is perceived by the majority of students. In order to explore what can lead a pupil to an atypical perception of risk, a cluster analysis, based on the risk perceptions of alcohol, tobacco, and cannabis use, was run to isolate the groups in which pupils tend to answer differently. Six clusters were established classifying students into those who failed to respond, deny the risks, do not know about the risks, see any drug use as great risk, see regular use as great risk, and who see a moderate risk for most frequencies of use. The nonresponders, risk deniers, and those ignorant of the risks are infrequent making up, in all, only 16.9% of the total sample. Gender, country, alcohol use, cannabis use, tobacco use, and friends’ consumption were used to describe both the individual risk perceptions and the clusters based on them. Both global context (country) and “micro” context (frequencies of drug use, peers lifestyle, and parental permissiveness) appear to play a major role in the risk perception of drug use.

Keywords :

• alcohol
• tobacco
• cannabis
• adolescents
• risk perception
• representation
• attitudes
• deviance
• cluster analysis
• cocaine
• LSD
• amphetamine
• ecstasy
• heroin
• GHB
• injection

THE AUTHORS

François Beck, Ph.D., is the Head of the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at the French National Institute for Prevention and Health Education (INPES). After completing a master degree in Statistics, he obtained a PhD in sociology at the Sorbonne University (Paris V) where he is currently a researcher of the Laboratory “Psychotrops, Mental Health and Society” (CESAMES), related to the National Scientific Research Center and the National Institute of Health and Medical Research. His research activities have focused on addictive behaviors, drug-related social factors, and mental health, with a special emphasis on methodological issues, gender, risk perception, and cross-cultural comparisons. Since 1997, he has developed and implemented the general population surveys on alcohol, tobacco, and illicit drug use in France. He has been involved as a principal investigator in several surveys both in the adult and adolescent general population. Furthermore, he is a member of the board of directors of the Demography Institute of Paris I University, and of the editorial board for the Psychotropes French Journal.

Stéphane Legleye, is the Head of the Survey and Sampling Department at the National Institute for Demographic Studies (INED, France). He is a PhD in epidemiology and associate researcher at the National Institute for Health and Medical Research (INSERM), U669. His fields of interest are drug use epidemiology and survey methodology. He is the former head of the General Population Survey Department at the French Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction (OFDT, France).

Pavla Chomynova has been working for the Czech National Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (NMC) in Prague, Czech Republic, since 2003. In NMC, she has been responsible for population and school surveys on drug use. She is involved in preparation of expert publications of the Czech NMC and Secretariat of the National Drug Commission, is responsible for relevant chapters of the Annual Report on the Situation in the Czech Republic, and coordinates the NMC working group on Population and School Surveys on Attitudes toward Drug Use. Since 2003, she has been a team member of the Czech part of the European School Survey Project on Alcohol and Other Drugs (ESPAD), and since 2004 a member of the international ESPAD project team. She also collaborated on preparation of General Population Survey on Substance Use in the Czech Republic in 2008 and in 2012. She is interested in topics of vulnerable groups of young people, attitudes toward drug use, use of licit drugs (alcohol and tobacco), and regional comparison of drug use in the Czech Republic and geographical data projections. She graduated in Social Geography at the Faculty of Natural Sciences of Charles University in Prague in 2002.

Patrick Miller, Ph.D., now retired, was a Senior Researcher at theAlcohol & Health Research Trust, University of the West of England in Bristol. He has been responsible for several population and school surveys on drug use in England and published many articles on these topics. He was also a member of the international ESPAD project team.