A Comparative Study to Assess the Knowledge and Attitude of Adolescents (16-18 Years) Regarding Alcoholism and its Hazards between Selected Rural and Urban Pre-University College at Bangalore

Alcoholism is considered as a serious public health issue in India and at large in the world. Adolescence is a period of the lifecycle when individuals are managing multiple and complex developmental tasks. They have less self control, emotional stability, and more likely to smoke, drink, use drugs, and get into trouble with the law. Alcohol misuse among adolescents is increase and excessive drinking is associated with psychological, social and physical harm to the individual, family and society. Descriptive comparative design was adopted. In view of the nature of the problem and to accomplish the objectives of the study, structured questionnaire and Likert scale was prepared focusing on knowledge and attitude of adolescents regarding alcoholism and its hazards. Validity was ensured in consultation with guides and experts in the field of nursing and medicine. Reliability of the tool was tested (r = 0.92). The study was carried out in Rural and Urban PU College at Bangalore. 60 adolescents were selected by using proportionate stratified random sampling technique from each Pre-University College. Therefore the sample size was 120. After obtaining formal permission from concerned authority structured questionnaire and Likert scale was used to collect the needed data. The result shows that an equal proportion 81.7% (49) of adolescents had moderate level of knowledge in rural and urban PU College. Majority 11.7% (07) of urban PU College had adequate knowledge than the rural (6.7%) PU College adolescents, remaining 11.7% (07) of rural and 6.7% (04) of urban PU College adolescents had inadequate knowledge regarding alcoholism and its hazards. Majority 60% (36) of them had favorable attitude in urban PU College and 55% (33) of them had neutral attitude in rural PU College. None of them was found with unfavorable attitude towards alcoholism and its hazards among rural and urban PU College adolescents. There was a significant positive correlation between the level of knowledge and attitude of adolescents in rural (p<0.05) and urban (p<0.05) PU College at 5% level.