A Study on Parental and Peer Influence on Adolescent Health Risk Behavior

A Study on Parental and Peer Influence on Adolescent Health Risk Behavior

Adolescents are the future of the country. It is this period that they face several problems as it is a stage of exposure and experimentation. They get exposed to several practices like consumption of alcohol, Drugs, Tobacco and unsafe Sexual practice. These behaviours are often triggered by faulty parenting and bad peer influence. Hence this study is an attempt to know the proneness among adolescents to follow such health risk behaviours and how these behaviours are influenced by parent and peers. The study reveals that about 59% of the adolescents are into one or multiple health risk behaviours and it is parental monitoring and peer modelling which are significantly associated with the overall health risk behaviour.(p value <0.05). When it comes to specific health risk behaviour, we can see a significant association between peer modelling and health risk behaviour. Peer modelling is an influence proved to be there on all the health risk behaviours namely consumption of tobacco, alcohol, drugs and practice of unsafe sex. However it is evident from the study that it is boys who are significantly higher in number than girls with regard to the practice of health risk behaviours. Key Words: Adolescents, Health Risk Behaviour, Parental Influence, Peer Influence

G Murthy Sushma

Social Work