| dc.description.abstract | The high rate of population increase in Kenya implies that
the population structure is becoming increasingly youthful. One
direct effect of this is that problems associated with the youth,
one of which is drug use, are also significantly increasing.
Invariably, this demands that more social studies should
focus on such problems of the youth. College students are among
the specific youth group that may be focused on. It is in this
respect that this study, like a great number of social inquiries
examines the social influences associated with drug use among
college students in Nairobi.
Based on the assumption that drug use, like many other forms
of human social behaviour, breeds from society, this study
examines among college students, a number of social factors
already shown to be associated with drug use. Among these
included, peer association, stress, commitment to religion and
to education, parental supervision and their families social
position. However, the major hypothesis was that peer
association explains drug use and non use of drugs to a greater
extent than the other factors. In view of this of this, the study also
examines the relative significance of all the factors against
each other.
The sample of college students isderived from all the nine
colleges of higher learning in Nairobi, through a purposive
random sampling method. Samples were drawn proportionally to the
prevaiIing student population inthe colleges. Asemi-structured
questionnaire was utilised tocollect specific quantitative data,
while the case study approach was used to gather importantqualitative data. In both cases, information was collected
through individual interviews. To test the hypotheses, this data
was analyses using descriptive analysis consisting of various
measures of association. On the other hand, measures of
predictive power of factors, the Kendalls tau a and b, were used
to establish the relative significance of factors that were found
to be associated with drug use.
Following the analysis of the data, the findings confirmed
that peer association, religious commitment and the family's
social position are related to drug use. In addition there were
clear indications that parental supervision, stress and
commitment to education may explain the direction of a youths'
attitude towards drug use, though the hypotheses were not
confirmed. But more important, the study confirmed the major
hypothesis that peer association exerts a greater influence on
use or non use of drugs by the youth, compared to the other
factors.
In conclusion, the study advocates that policies should
focus mainly on the peer group which exerts most pressure for the
youth to use or to abtain from drugs Because the peer group
will remain an important part of the youths' life, peer group
attitudes should be reinforced against the negative ones, if drug
use has to be controlled. While educational and religious
institutions have a big role to play in this case, the family
bears the greatest challenge of controlling drug use | |
