Examining the relationships between self-control, coping with stress and perceived social support with alcohol and substance use risks of university students

Revealing the substance use risks with biopsychosocial aspects became a necessity, since university students are open to experience behaviors such as substance use due to the effects of their developmental period as well as the difficulties, such as separation from the family. In this study, the relationships between substance use risks, various socio-demographic characteristics, self-control levels, coping with stress skills and perceived social support levels of university students were investigated. This study, which was carried out using the exploratory sequential mixed method design, was conducted with randomly selected 790 students, studying at two state universities in two major cities in the 2017-2018 academic year. The sample of qualitative part of the study consisted of 18 participants, selected by maximum variation sampling method. In the study, the Alcohol and Substance Use Sub-Scales of the Risk Behavior Survey, Self-Control Scale, Coping with Stress Scale, Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support and Personal Information Form were used. In the analysis of the data, non-parametric Kruskal Wallis H and Mann Whitney U tests, and parametric tests Pearson's Product-Moment Correlation, Independent Samples t-Test, One-Way Analysis of Variance and Hierarchical Multiple Regression Analysis were used for descriptive statistics. Qualitative data of the study were processed using the Nvivo 11 qualitative data analysis program. Gender, housing type, amount of monthly expenditure, the activity that they participated most, smoking, the presence of a family member who received an addiction treatment were found to be the effective demographic variables in explaining the risk of alcohol and substance use. The negative relationship between self-control, coping through problem orientation and avoidance was found to predict alcohol use risk and the model explained 41% of the total variance, the negative relationship between self-control and coping through avoidance was found to predict the risk of substance use and the model explained 21% of the total variance. The perceived social support, however, did not make a significant contribution in explaining the risks. The aspects of qualitative findings that do and do not support quantitative findings were also revealed. The factors such as religion, being harmful to health, family rules, dislike of the taste were found to protect against the risk of alcohol and substance use. It may be suggested that similar research should be repeated with samples from different universities in the future, and that further experimental research should be carried out in order to improve social work interventions aimed at increasing students' self-control and coping skills.