Interplay of socio-spatial and other factors to produce situational substance use or abstinence in young, socially integrated users of alcohol or cigarettes

Abstract

The present study is concerned with the everyday spaces, places and situations in which substances are used (situational substance use) or not (situational abstinence). Of particular interest are the specific features of such spaces, as these can be conceptualised as potential socio-spatial factors for substance use to be addressed in drug prevention activities. The study focuses on those features that are salient for people who use substances. The research therefore addresses the following questions:

Q1: What features of everyday spaces are salient for people who use substances?

Q2: How do these perceived features relate to their own substance use in those spaces?

Q3: How do these perceived features interplay with further socio-spatial and other factors (e.g., biographical, cultural) to result in (patterns of) situational substance use or abstinence?

These questions are explored using a mixed-methods approach based on interviews combining repertory grid technique, map drawing and topic guides with 24 socially integrated, occasional or frequent users of alcohol or cigarettes aged 18-26 years, recruited from a student population. Full analysis will be completed for the conference, but preliminary findings include:

Q1: In total, 296 everyday spaces were systematically compared, resulting in 108 salient features of everyday spaces. Through content analyses, these were reduced to 9 types of everyday spaces (e.g., home, work) and 29 salient features (e.g., private/public, relaxed/hectic, alone/in company). Physical aspects (e.g., design), although a major focus of prior studies in this field, were rarely mentioned in the interviews. Instead, it was less tangible aspects (e.g., feelings toward the people present, personal meaning of a space, informal norms) that dominated study participants’ accounts of their everyday spaces.

Q2: Study participants rated their everyday spaces on the salient features and provided quantitative substance use data for each space. Semantic differentials using these data showed that spaces representing different substance use patterns (e.g., alcohol or cigarettes only, alcohol and cigarettes, no use) were perceived differently along some features (e.g., sense of time) but not others.

Q3: Participants’ accounts pointed to the importance of considering factors in relation to each other. The analysis was therefore expanded to consider interactions and conflicts between simultaneously present factors (e.g., socio-spatial factor such as “people present drinking beer” vs. other factor such as “personal dislike of beer”). To illustrate these data, causal chains resulting in situational substance use or abstention are extracted and visualised as networks of factors.

A key outcome of this study will be a list of socio-spatial factors that influence situational substance use, alongside information on how they (co-)produce situational substance use outcomes. Although in recent years there has been an increased interest in socio-spatial factors in the substance use field, including as part of environmental drug prevention strategies, models showing how specific socio-spatial and other factors interact to result in situational substance use or abstinence are lacking. The present study thus adds to the available research by offering a framework that could inform such models and future prevention efforts.

Speakers

Presentation files

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Part of session