Risk Factors and Impact of Alcohol Use Among School-Age Adolescents

Abstract

Risk factors and impact of underage drinking have been favourite topics of discussion among parents, teachers and educationalists for decades. Many claimed that alcohol use among school-age adolescents has created social and disciplinary problems in school, family and community. Nonetheless, the current study aims to examine explicitly the risk factors for the early onset of alcohol use among school-age adolescents between 14-18 years old and the impact from the tendency to the development of juvenile and negative learning behaviour and academic performance perspective. A total of 35 participants were involved in this qualitative descriptive case study which comprised of 15 school-going adolescents, five drop-outs, ten juveniles and five counsellors. A qualitative descriptive case study methodology was adopted to provide more substantive and comprehensive findings. In-depth interviews were administered and semi-structured questions were used for the collection of data and concurrently thematic analysis was deployed to analyze the data collected. In the findings, negative curiosity, bad modelling, peer pressure and alcohol ignorance were among the risk factors attributed to the early onset of alcohol use. However, the noticeable impacts of underage drinking among school-age adolescents were lack of motivation in studies, inattentive and sleepiness in class, truancy, poor grades, emotional and involved in fighting and youth violence, and dropout from school.