Awareness on the Behavioral Effects of Psychoactive Drugs and the Emotional Attitude of Grade 11 Students Towards Drug Addiction

Abstract

INTRODUCTION

This study aimed to determine the relationship of awareness on the behavioral effects of psychoactive drugs and the emotional attitude of Grade 11 students towards drug addiction.

METHODS

This research is a quantitative research design using two sets of questionnaires to measure the level of awareness on the behavioral effects of psychoactive drugs and their attitude towards the use of drugs in a five-point Likert scale. The emotional attitude scale was pilot tested to 150 students with a Cronbach alpha of 0.95 which means that the items are excellent and reliable.

RESULTS

The 72 Grade 11 students are strongly aware of the behavioral effects of psychoactive drugs with a weighted mean of 3.53. They are also highly emotionally affected by people using drugs with a mean of 3.63. Their awareness of psychoactive drugs and their emotional attitude towards drug addiction has a significant weak correlation of 0.461 at p-level of .001. Thus, the null hypothesis was rejected.

DISCUSSIONS

It can be noted that the higher the awareness of students in the behavioral effects of psychoactive drugs, their emotional attitude towards the people using drugs tend to be negative. Meanwhile, as stated by Sao (2009), the meta-analysis results show that awareness has had little effect on attitude. Results from the assessment of different programs, which include curricular classes, have shown significant immediate improvement, not only in knowledge but also in drug use patterns.