Cognition, attitude and abuse tendency for new type drugs and influencing factors in middle school students in Hainan Province

Abstract

Objective: To investigate the cognition, attitude, abuse tendency for new type drugs and influencing factors in middle school students in Hainan Province, and evaluate the effect of health education about drug use prevention in teenagers. Methods: A cross-sectional survey design and stratified cluster random sampling method were used to select 36 middle schools in Hainan to conduct an anonymous questionnaire survey in students of all grades. The estimated sample size was 1 680.The information collected by the questionnaire included students' basic information, attitude to new drugs, abuse tendency and acceptance of prevention education. EpiData 3.1 software was used for data entry and sorting, and SPSS 22.0 software was used for statistical analysis. Results: A total of 45 919 students were surveyed, averagely, they knew 2.87 kinds of new type drugs. The students' cognition of traditional drugs was higher than that of new type drugs. Friends or close friends using new type drugs, the low cognition level of new drug types were the risk factor for new type drug abuse. The acceptance rate of health education against drug use was 90.33% (41 480/45 919), and averagely, the students participated in 3.36 kinds of health education activities against drug abuse. The main channel for the students to acquire anti-drug knowledge was anti-drug lectures (80.00%, 33 186/41 480). Conclusions: Middle school students have low cognition level of new type drugs in Hainan. Health education can effectively curb the tendency of substance abuse in Hainan Province. It is necessary to further improve the health education activities in aspects of stage, form and timeliness to help more students to recognize the harm of drugs.