A study to assess the effectiveness of awareness program on knowledge on substance abuse and its consequences among adolescent boys in higher secondary school

Abstract

Adolescence is a fluctuating period where in there is total confusion regarding everything that is supposed to be performed. The study was conducted to determine the effectiveness of awareness program and knowledge of substance abuse among adolescent boys. Adolescence is a fluctuating period wherein they love to do things as they wish and something that gives them a thrill without reasoning and hence they need to be guided. Determine the knowledge and find the effectiveness of an awareness program on substance abuse and its consequences among the adolescent boys. Find the association between the post test knowledge scores and the selected variables like age, gender, type of family, place of residence, living with, monthly income of parents, education of parents, religion, family history of substance abuse and socio-economic status. A per-test post-test design was used. 60 students from higher secondary school students was selected by the pretest level of knowledge, shows that in the pretest, 28(46.6%) had poor knowledge, 24(40%) had average knowledge, and 8 (13.3%) had good knowledge. In posttest knowledge, 32(53.3%) had average knowledge and 28 (46.6%) had good knowledge regarding substance abuse and its consequences among adolescent boys. the pretest mean score of knowledge among adolescent boys was 4.31 with standard deviation 1.61 and the post test mean score was 3.24 with standard deviation 0.93. The calculated paired ‘t’ t est value of t=9.9371 was found to be statistically highly significant at p < 0.001 level. This clearly infers there is significant improvement in the post test level of knowledge regarding substance abuse and its consequences among adolescent boys. The study indicates that the awareness program helps students to gain knowledge and helps in enlightening their future.