Age, Gender, Socio-Economic Status, Attitudes Towards Drug Abuse as Determinants of Deviant Behavior Among Undergraduate Students

Evidence from literature shows that deviant behavior is on high side among undergraduates in Nigeria whereas some certain psychosocial factors causing this phenomenon have not been fully explored. This study examined whether age, gender, socio-economic status and attitude towards drug abuse determine deviant behavior among the undergraduate students. It adopted ex-post facto design. Simple random sampling technique was used to sample 269 participants. The Prescription Drug Attitudes Questionnaire (PDAQ) and Deviant Behavior Variety Scale (DBVS) were used to gather data from the participants. T-test analysis and multiple regression were used to test the formulated hypotheses. The results revealed that age, monthly allowance and attitude towards drug abuse have significant joint prediction of deviant behavior (R=.358 R2 =.128, F=10.594, p<.05) while only attitude towards drug abuse independently predicted deviant behavior (R=.236, R2 =.056 F = 17.112; p<.01). Also, there was a significant gender difference on deviant behavior [t (293) = 4.196, p<.01], where male respondents scored high significantly (M=4.09, SD=3.44) compared to female respondents (M=2.53, SD=2.31) on deviant behavior. It is therefore recommended that policy makers in educational sector and the governing council of tertiary institutions need to create awareness on the debilitating effects of drugs on students’ behavior, especially among males.