Religiosity, gender and educational attainment as predictors of drug abuse in South Africa: a logistic regression approach

Abstract

The study examined religiosity, gender and educational attainment as predictors of drug abuse in South Africa. Cross-sectional data from 2015 South Africa General Household survey was used for the study. Data was analyzed on 47,275 respondents ages 18 to 114 years. The mean age of the respondents was 40.3 (SD = 16.42). Results showed that religiosity has significant effect on drug abuse X2 (df = 3) = 37.81, p<.001. Results further showed that gender has asignificant effect on drug abuse X2 (df = 3) = 26.77, p<.001. Finally, the outcome of the study showed that educational attainment has asignificant effect on drug abuse X2 (df = 3) = 14.13, p<.001. The result of the logistic regression showed that the hazard rate for the males was higher than that of the females. It was also revealed that as educational attainment increases, hazard rate for drug abuse decreases. The result further showed the hazard rate for the religious respondents to be lower compared to that of the non-religious respondents. As a conclusion, we recommend that drug abuse can be controlled by encouraging more religious practices, make education more accessible and affordable and controlthe accessibility/availabilityof drugs of abuse, especially among the males citizens.