Regulação emocional, perceção de risco e motivos para o consumo de substâncias em estudantes universitários

Abstract

Taking into account that the use of psychoactive substances has become a worldwideproblem, mainly affecting adolescents and young adults, it is pertinent to study this theme,focusing on consumption among university students, since this phase corresponds to a stageof life composed of new transitions, new peer groups and greater attendance at academicparties, which can trigger consumption. Therefore, this research aims to characterizeemotional regulation and risk perception in consumers, identify the reasons that lead toconsumption in this population, explore a possible relationship between sociodemographicvariables and dependent variables, and identify the most consumed psychoactive substanceamong university students. In this way, we resort to a Sociodemographic Questionnaire,Emotional Regulation Questionnaire, Risk Perception Questionnaire and Reasons forConsumption Questionnaire. The instruments were applied to 113 subjects, most of themfemale (n = 86, 76.1%), aged between 18 and 55 years old (M = 23.58, DP = 6.62). The datawere collected online, through the Google forms platform, and were later subjected tostatistical treatment using the IBM SPSS Statistics version 28 program. The results point tocelebration, experimentation and pleasure as the most frequent reasons associated withconsumption. In addition, they show that most participants consider the consumption ofalcohol, tobacco and cannabis to be low risk, with consumers having a lower perception ofrisk compared to people who do not consume. There were also differences between sex, thatis, males have a higher rate of consumption and have a lower perception of risk in relation toconsumption compared to females. These results are confirmed, going against the literature. However, regarding emotional regulation, it was not possible to verify statistically significantdifferences, depending on consumers and gender. The scarcity of investigations in thisspecific population about substance consumption in general is highlighted, which may be thesubject of future studies.

Date of Award	6 Mar 2023
Original language	Portuguese
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Paulo César Dias (Supervisor)