ABSTRACT

Background

In England, drug use in young people increased significantly between 2014 and 2017. This upward trend continues despite implementation of drug use policies to reduce supply, possession and manufacture of illicit drugs. Taking the view that drug use is a learnt behaviour, the purpose of this paper is to evaluate whether social learning (SL) factors explain drug use in English adolescents across: a) nine regions b) by age (11 to 15 years) and c) by gender using the Social Structure Social Learning (SSSL) theory as a framework. This study addresses a gap in the literature on English adolescent students by identifying the strongest SL pathway to drug use (imitation, parental reinforcement, attitudes, peer association).

Methods

Cumulative mediation analyses were carried out on data from the Smoking Drinking Drug Use Survey 2016 (N = 12,051) on adolescents aged 11–15 years across England.

Results

The results show that imitation, peer association, attitudes and parental reinforcement mediate drug use at ages 12–14 and for some regions but not for gender.

Conclusion

Drug use is a socially learnt behaviour in adolescents students living in England.

中文翻译：

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英国青少年学生的非法药物使用——累积中介分析的结果

摘要

背景

在英格兰，2014 年至 2017 年间，年轻人的吸毒人数显着增加。尽管实施了吸毒政策以减少非法药物的供应、拥有和制造，但这种上升趋势仍在继续。鉴于吸毒是一种习得行为，本文的目的是评估社会学习 (SL) 因素是否解释了英国青少年吸毒的原因：a) 九个地区 b) 年龄（11 至 15 岁）和 c ) 按性别使用社会结构社会学习 (SSSL) 理论作为框架。本研究通过确定最强的 SL 吸毒途径（模仿、父母强化、态度、同伴联系）来解决关于英国青少年学生的文献中的空白。

方法

累积中介分析是根据 2016 年吸烟饮酒调查（N = 12,051）对英格兰 11-15 岁青少年的数据进行的。

结果

结果表明，模仿、同伴交往、态度和父母强化在 12-14 岁和某些地区介导了药物使用，但对性别没有影响。

结论

吸毒是生活在英国的青少年学生的一种社会习得行为。