How much does the family and social environment indicates the youth health risk behavior in the Czech Republic?
Abstract
Alcohol consumption, tobacco smoking and substance use are the world´s top leading causes of ill health and premature death. Youth health-related risk behaviors are of the highest importance in the area of health prevention.
Social, economic and environmental circumstances are contextually interconnected factors reflected in behavioral characteristics of the individual. Generally, the youth population (especially teenagers) is more likely to be threatened by the substance abuse and health risk behavior, mainly in the context of processes of individualization and socialization present in this age.
In this paper we focus on potential connection between family socio-economic and adolescents´ psychosocial characteristics in addition with geographical measure of the phenomena on one hand and self-reported substance use frequency (alcohol, tobacco and marijuana smoking) regarded as health risky level by the Czech schoolable population on the other hand. Separate logistic regression models were constructed showing the strong relation of these social, family and geographical characteristics to youth health risk behavior.
Data were obtained by the 2007 ESPAD Survey (European School Survey Project on Alcohol and Other Drugs) with 8 573 evaluated adolescent respondents (age 15-16 completed) in the Czech Republic.