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Perceived Risk and Social Norms Associated with Alcohol, Tobacco, and Marijuana Use in Argentinean Teenagers

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Abstract

This study examined the association of social norms (i.e., descriptive and injunctive norms) and perceived risk with alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana use in a sample of 378 Argentinean adolescents (60.3% girls, mean age 15.26 [SD = 1.26]). We conducted descriptive, correlation, and multivariate (i.e., hierarchical regression) analyses to describe substance use and examine the association of social norms and perceived risk with the frequency of heavy episodic drinking, tobacco, and marijuana. Perceived risk, injunctive norms, and descriptive peer norms were associated with frequency of substance use. Parental, but not peer, injunctive norms were associated with heavy alcohol use while peer injunctive norms were associated with tobacco and marijuana use. Findings suggest that increasing parent’s disapproval of substance use, reducing biases on descriptive and injunctive social norms on substance use, or increasing the perceived risk associated with such use may be valuable potential targets in interventions to reduce/prevent underage substance use.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank all the schools and all the participants that took part of the study. We also would like to thank María Florencia Camerano and María Pía Verde for their assistance during data collection.

Funding

This work was supported by grants from the National Secretary of Science and Technology, (FONCYT 2015–849), by grants from the Secretary of Science and Technology- National University of Córdoba (SECyT-UNC) to Angelina Pilatti. This work was also supported by Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET, Argentina). CONICET, FONCyT and SECyT-UNC had no role in the study design, collection, analysis and interpretation of the data, writing the manuscript, or the decision to submit the paper for publication.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Facultad de Psicología, Bv de La Reforma Y Enfermera Gordillo S/N, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Ciudad Universitaria, 5000, Córdoba, Argentina

    Angelina Pilatti, Belén Acosta, Jorge Diaz, Florencia Caneto & Ricardo Marcos Pautassi

  2. Instituto de Investigaciones Psicológicas, IIPSI, Unidad Ejecutora CONICET, Córdoba, Argentina

    Angelina Pilatti & Florencia Caneto

  3. Centre for Alcohol Policy Research, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia

    Emmanuel Kuntsche

  4. Instituto de Investigación Médica M. Y M. Ferreyra, INIMEC-CONICET-UNC, Córdoba, Argentina

    Ricardo Marcos Pautassi

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  1. Angelina Pilatti
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  2. Emmanuel Kuntsche
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  3. Belén Acosta
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  4. Jorge Diaz
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  5. Florencia Caneto
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  6. Ricardo Marcos Pautassi
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Correspondence to Angelina Pilatti.

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Ethics Approval

Study procedures were reviewed and approved by the National Agency for Promotion of Science and Technology. The study was conducted in accordance with the declaration of Helsinki and it followed the ethical guidelines of the American Psychological Association (2016) and the Argentinean National Law for the Protection of Personal Data.

Informed Consent

All procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000 (5). Informed consent was obtained from all participants for being included in the study.

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All authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.

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Pilatti, A., Kuntsche, E., Acosta, B. et al. Perceived Risk and Social Norms Associated with Alcohol, Tobacco, and Marijuana Use in Argentinean Teenagers. Int J Ment Health Addiction 21, 1782–1798 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11469-021-00689-7

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