Family and peer influence on substance abuse among adolescent secondary school students in Thika District, Kenya

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to find out the family and peer influence on substance abuse among secondary school students in Thika district. The sample consisted of 332 Form Four students from thirteen secondary schools which comprised government and private schools. Four research questions and three null hypothesis were formulated to guide in the study. A likert type questionnaire duly validated was used to collect data. The means, percentages and standard deviation were used to answer the research questions while t-test was used to test the null hypotheses. The t-test analysis of results at 0.05 level of significance. The results further showed that there was no significant difference in the responses of male and female students on the family and peer influence on substance abuse among secondary school students. There was also no difference between the level of substance abuse among male and female students in Thika District. This implies that the involvement of male and female students in substance abuse was the same, that both boys and girls abused drugs in the same way.