Social association membership and risky behaviours among adolescents in South Africa

[摘要] Background: Risky behaviours are notably the most important factors contributing tonegative health outcomes among adolescents. A number of diseases and deaths have beenlinked to risky and harmful behaviours. Research has shown that being involved in one riskybehaviour increases the likelihood of involvement in additional risky behaviours.Adolescents have been identified at the centre of sustainable development, particularly inachieving goals related to bringing poverty to an end, promoting health and well-being,attaining equitable and quality primary and secondary education as well as achievinginclusive and sustainable economic growth.Objectives: The objective of this study was firstly to examine the levels of social associationmembership and risky behaviour among adolescents. Secondly, to identify thedeterminants of risky behaviour among South African adolescents and lastly, to examine therelationship between social association membership and risky behaviour amongadolescents.Methods: Data were drawn from the South African Youth Life Style Survey of 2008. Asample of 3335 adolescents aged 12 to 19 years was analysed. Four binary and onemultinomial logistic regression analyses were conducted. The four binary dependentvariables were for risky sexual behaviours, risky substance use behaviours, other riskybehaviours and engaging in at least one type of behaviour. For each of these binarydependent variables the response category was yes or no. The dependent variable for themultinomial logistic regression model was any adolescent risky behaviour which wascategorised as; no behaviour, any one category of behaviour, any two categories ofbehaviour and all three categories of behaviour. The key independent variables were firstlyan index variable generated by merging all the different social associations into one variablethat had the response yes or no to being a member of any social association. There werealso five key independent variables that were the individual social associations namely;sports, religious groups, choir, drama and other associations.Results: The two most common social associations that adolescents engaged in were sportsgroups (515 per 1000 adolescents) and religious groups (342 per 1000 adolescents). Riskyviibehaviours with the highest number adolescents engaging in them were driving without aseatbelt (32%), consuming alcohol (32%), being a passenger in a car driven by someoneunder the influence of alcohol (28%), tobacco use (21%) and lack of condom use (9%).Adolescents who were not members of social associations were found to have decreasedthe risk of engaging in one, two and all three categories of risky behaviours. Not being amember of religious groups increased the risk of engaging in one, two and all threecategories of risky behaviour. Adolescents who were not members of sports groups werefound to have lower risks of engaging in one, two and all three categories of risky behaviour,as well as decreased odds of engaging in at least one type of risky behaviour.Conclusion: The study found that there was a statistically significant relationship betweensocial association membership and risky behaviours among adolescents in South Africa.More particularly, religious associations were found to be protective factors to riskybehaviours and sports, drama and other associations were found to be platforms that couldpotentially increase the likelihood of risky behaviour among adolescents.

[发布机构] University of the Witwatersrand