PEER PRESSURE AND THE USE OF DRUGS AMONG UNIVERSITY STUDENTS

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to identify the correlation between certain peer pressure characteristics and drug consumption in adolescents. Peer relationships have a key role in the adolescent period. In a negative context, peer pressure can be done in various ways that benefit from the characteristics of growing adolescents, who are often insecure and need a sense of acceptance and belonging. Methodology: This study adopted a survey method and data was collected from 234 students from the Juraj Dobrila University of Pula, Croatia, on peer pressure questionnaires. For analysing the data SPSS was used. Main Findings: The findings of this study verify the existence of a statistically significant correlation between certain peer pressure characteristics and drug consumption aiming at experiencing the feeling which the rest of the peer group already has. Implications/ Applications: The value of the results, besides obtaining valuable new indicators based on scientific research methods, is that they offer guidelines for prevention and intervention in cases of various peer problems and problems with the abuse of addictive substances. The novelty of the Study: Drug consumption has become one of the prevailing problems in adults in the current era. This study is enhancing the literature by investigating the role that peer pressure plays in drug consumption.


INTRODUCTION
Peers have much more influence on youth than family, especially parents. Therefore, adolescents do whatever their peers demand from them, which is manifested in the decisions they make and in the way they behave (Allen, Chango, Szwedo, Schad& Marston, 2012; Gatpandan&Ambat, 2017; Veerachaisantikul&Chootarut, 2016). When people that they respect are involved in things like drugs and alcohol, peer pressure can make it very difficult for a child to say no to trying them. A study by Columbia University found that a child is up to six times more likely to have an alcoholic drink if they have friends who drink. However, although this problem is generally thought of as a teenage issue, research has shown that peer pressure may well carry through all age groups, as peer groups continue to exist throughout adult life. Adolescents are particularly vulnerable to peer pressure because they are at a stage of development when they are separating more from their parents' influence, but have not yet established their values or understanding about human relationships or the consequences of their behaviour. They are also typically striving for social acceptance and are more willing to engage in behaviours against their better judgment to be accepted. The adolescents' susceptibility to the influence and also pressure imposed by the peer group depends on many factors, first of all on their mutual closeness and the quality of their friendship (Glaser, Shelton, &Bree, 2010;Iryani&Murtiwidayanti, 2017;Manager, 2017;Mai &Thuy, 2015). Different forms of peer pressure can affect adolescents in various ways. In a negative context, peer pressure can be expressed in ways favoured by the adolescents' characteristics of growththey are often insecure and they need to feel accepted and belonging to the group. Peer pressure increases in the period of adolescence, and one of the research (Bot, Engels, Knibbe&Meeus, 2005) propose it may manifest as a very negative impact on the adolescent.
Thus, peer pressure can influence an adolescent to abuse drugs. Various meta-analysis data indicate that an average relationship between peers has a stronger effect on substance use than that of the parents. The adolescent age and type of drug, as a few restricted types of influence, have been taken into account (Allen et al., 2003).

Significance of the Study
The contribution of the study, besides obtaining valuable new indicators based on scientific research methods, is that they offer guidelines for intervention and treatment in cases of various peer problems and problems with addictive substances abuse.

Research Objectives
The objective of this study is i) To determine the correlation between the use of drugs by which they want to experience what the rest of the peer group members already have, and ii) To determine the characteristics of peer pressure among university students along with their predictive value.
A lot of reasons to start using addictive substances are known. Some studies discovered that drug abuse is correlated with serious personal problems. Different emotional states and tensions are reduced by using drugs (Bortner, 1988 (Bortner, 1988;Boynton, 1988;Richter, Brown & Mott, 2010), that drug addicts have a lower sense of their responsibility. Lower sense of responsibility may lead to a lack of self-confidence, their unsatisfactory success, helplessness… The adolescents who are unstable, unsatisfied and unhappy by themselves or the environment they live in, experiment with different substances, and their internal motivation to use the drug again will arise faster. Also, selfcontrol disappears, and habit will develop and turn into an addiction. Just over 1/8 students used different drugs either before or during their university education (Bucher, Vu &Hojat, 2012; Naeem&Hameed, 2018; Shams, 2016; Suharti&Pramono, 2016). One of their hypothesis was confirmed: adolescents who used psychostimulants have significantly higher aggressive-hostility personality factor.
When it comes to the decision on drug consumption, the adolescent's sex should also be considered. Across genders, there are physiological differences and they are influenced by many socio-cultural factors. Different social roles, of men and women, can create different patterns and practices when it comes to using drugs (Zolala, Mahdavian, Haghdoost, &Karamouzian, 2016).

Hypothesis
This study proposes the existence of a statistically significant correlation of certain peer pressure characteristics and drug consumption aiming at experiencing what the rest of the peer group members already have. The proposition is based on the assumption, which has been confirmed by former research, that a higher adolescents' autonomy from peers is linked to a higher resilience to the peer influence, which depends on the young people's maturity and increases with age, and vice versa (Allen et al, 2003). Susceptibility to group influence depends on their mutual closeness and the quality of their friendships, as well as on assertive denial (Glaser et al, 2010). As aforementioned, differences in drug-using are evident concerning sex, which is important since the sample observed women are prevailing. Gender differences are evident in reasons of drug use and initiation and also motivation (Zolala et al, 2016).
It is hypothesized that,

H1:
There is a significant correlation between certain peer pressure characteristics and drug consumption aiming at experiencing what the rest of the peer group members already have.

Sample of Examinees
Examinees were 234 students of the Faculty of Educational Sciences of the JurajDobrila University of Pula, Croatia. Table 1 shows the gender of respondents.   Table 2 shows examinees regarding the study year they attended in the 2018/2019 academic year, indicating that a larger number of examinees (over 86%) were attending one of the first three years of study, which means that they still were in the upper limits of the adolescent age.

The Instrument and Data Collection
The

Data Analysis
Besides calculating the basic statistical values, the regression analysis was used in data processing as part of the SPSS program. It is important to me to be similar to people I socialize with to feel good (item 1) in the sense that a higher value represents a higher self-evaluation of susceptibility to peer pressure. However, in general, except for the separated items, the susceptibility to peer pressure was self-evaluated to a lower extent, i.e. spanning from never to rarely. Moreover, the offered answer "always" linked to a certain peer pressure characteristic was not chosen in 40% of the items, while in item 20 (I bet / gamble because my friends also do it) answers "sometimes", "often" and "always" were never chosen. The regression analysis was done on a predictive set of items that describe certain peer pressure characteristics and the criterion item of drug consumption by which they want to have the experience which the rest of the group already had. The results show that there is a statistically significant correlation between peer pressure characteristics and drug consumption by which they want to have the experience which the rest of the group already had (

DISCUSSION
The research confirms the hypothesis assuming the existence of a statistically significant correlation between certain peer pressure characteristics and drug consumption aiming at experiencing the feeling which the rest of the peer group already has. The aforementioned is confirmed by research when it comes to peer pressure, personality traits and selfesteem (Ginsburg, La Greca& Silverman, 1998), which means that the pressure imposed on an individual by the peer group is higher if the person has lower self-esteem and vice versa (Kaplan, 2004;Prinstein, 2007). About sexual behaviour, the research conducted by authors Potard, Curtois, &Rusch (2008), which aimed at determining "to what degree the predominance of risky sexual behaviour during adolescence is the result of social influence, in particular, that of peers, according to the perception of their attitudes and sexual behaviour, leads to the conclusion that the sexual norms of peers influence young people's attitudes and behaviours. Gender differences in sexual socialization are also important".
In our context, considering all of the above, the main role in the phase of adaptation to the university students' life and prevention and intervention in cases of various peer problems, as well as the promotion of health in a wide sense, is given to students' associations and centres and Psychological counselling working at JurajDobrila University in Pula, Croatia" (Radetić-Paić, Ružić-Baf&Medaković, 2013) because if a peer problem occurs, the positive influence of the family should be compensated. In that context, learning strategies are important to handle peer pressure effectively, for instance, learn to say no, know yourself, and remember your values, choose the right friends who will support your value.

CONCLUSION
Different forms of peer pressure can affect adolescents in various ways. In a negative context, peer pressure can be expressed in ways favoured by the adolescents' characteristics of growththey are often insecure and they need to feel accepted and belonging to the group. Peer pressure increases in the period of adolescence and may manifest as a very negative impact on the adolescent. The current study highlights that peer pressure may affect adolescents adversely and they may begin to abuse addictive substances and become drug addicts. This research has also highlighted avenues that are yet to be explored by future researchers.

LIMITATIONS OF CURRENT RESEARCH
This research limitation is the relatively small sample of examinees limited to only one university population, as well as the fact that the diverse effects that different drugs have on the user may mean that the reasons for use will closely mirror these differences. Thus stimulants will be used for reasons relating to increased nervous system arousal and drugs with sedatives will be used for reasons relating to an increased nervous system depression" (Boys, Marsden &Strang, 2001) and this was not studied in this research, and it could influence results.