Effectiveness of role play on knowledge of adolescents regarding substance abuse

Background: substance abuse and dependency are most common during adolescence. adolescents are in a transitional phase,confusion can sometimes make them susceptible to taking up unfavourable habits. attitude shaping by parents and knowledge of harmfulness of substance abuse can indirectly motivate the user to give up the habit. substance abuse control programmes,focusing on youth,are essential,to reduce the burden of related diseases. objectives: it was aimed to assess the level of knowledge of adolescents regarding substance abuse,to find the effectiveness of role play on knowledge regarding substance abuse among adolescents,to find out the association of knowledge scores of adolescents regarding substance abuse with selected socio demographic variables. material and methods: a quasi experimental,one group pre-test post-test design with evaluative approach was adopted for this study. the study was conducted at krishna charitable trust’s english medium school and junior college,karad,maharashtra,india. simple random sampling with lottery method was used for selecting the 60 subjects from viiith,ixth and xth class. on the 1st day a structured knowledge questionnaire was used to assess the knowledge on substance abuse and role play was conducted followed by post test on the 7th day. data was analyzed by using descriptive and inferential statistics. result: the mean and standard deviation of the knowledge scores of the subjects in pre test was 11.51 + 3.55 which increased in post test after role play to 17.5 + 2.89. the paired ‘t’ test value were 15.363 (p < 0.0001) showing a significant increase in knowledge regarding substance abuse. there was an association between type of family and general information on substance abuse,education of father with commonly abused substances and the total score on substance abuse,education of mother with commonly abused substances and prevention and management of substance abuse and number of children in the family was associated with general information on substance abuse after role play. conclusion: the study showed that the role play on substance abuse was effective in improving the knowledge of adolescents and thus helps them to understand the harmful effects of substance abuse and to take necessary methods to control it. © journal of krishna institute of medical sciences university.