Abstract
This paper explores the incidence and individual determinants of smoking and alcohol drinking with a high prevalence among young people in Moldova. It goes beyond epidemiological approach and descriptive analysis and provides a sociological explanation for these risk-taking behaviours by linking them to local social context in which young people inhabit. The study is based on secondary data analysis of National Youth Survey of Moldova among 14-29 aged population (1112 respondents) carried out in 2016, commissioned by the EU-OECD Youth nclusion project and Ministry of Education, Culture and Research of the Republic of Moldova. Data were processed in SPSS. Multivariate analysis, adjusting for demographic co-variates was performed using logistic regression. The results of this study show that rates of male smoking and alcohol drinking are high, while rates in women are far lower. According to multivariate data analysis, gender and age are strong individual determinants for both health-risk practices. As well, another important predictor for these behaviors is young people’s educational level – those with lower education level were particularly likely to smoke and drink alcohol. The study revealed also a strong interrelation between these health-risk practices. In paper is argued that high prevalence of smoking and drinking in male may reflect a normative structure for male socializing. Taking into consideration that strongest predictor variable overall is male gender, and strong relationship between heavy drinking and smoking, these behavioral factors might be responsible for the increasing in premature deaths among males in middle ag
Highlights
Young people’s health-related attitudes and behaviours, especially health-risk practices, and their determinants are major topics in both medical and psychosocial studies, while their findings and recommendations are crucial for informing the development of effective health education and health promotion policy, programs and practices.The interest for studying health behavior has considerably increased over the past decades and is related to two main findings, namely that a great part of morbidity and mortality is caused by behavioral factors [1, 2, 3] and behavior can be ‘influenced’ or ‘changed’, which place a particular emphasis on prevention and education individual responsibility for health [4, 2, 5]
This paper explores the prevalence and socio-demographic factors of smoking and alcohol drinking as most common health-risk practices with a high prevalence among young people in Moldova
This study focuses on smoking and alcohol consumption among youth, especially on binge drinking, as most harmful for individual’s health and investigate how these influence each other
Summary
This paper explores the incidence and individual determinants of smoking and alcohol drinking with a high prevalence among young people in Moldova. It goes beyond epidemiological approach and descriptive analysis and provides a sociological explanation for these risk-taking behaviours by linking them to local social context in which young people inhabit. According to multivariate data analysis, gender and age are strong individual determinants for both health-risk practices. As well, another important predictor for these behaviors is young people’s educational level – those with lower education level were likely to smoke and drink alcohol. Исследование основано на анализе вторичных данных Национального Опроса среди Молодежи в возрасте от 14 до 29 лет (1112 респондентов), проведенном в 2016 г. по заказу EU-OECD и
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