Risk behaviour in an urban and a rural male adolescent population

There is an increasing trend of risk behaviour in adolescents worldwide but very little literature is available in India on this important subject. We surveyed an urban male adolescent population and a comparable rural population to determine the difference in their risk behaviour.

A comparative cross-sectional study was conducted among 199 and 152 male adolescents from an urban village of south Delhi and a rural village in Uttar Pradesh. A pretested semi-structured interview schedule with 36 items was applied on all subjects by trained interviewers.

Consuming alcohol, smoking, pre-marital sexual intercourse and consuming bhang (cannabis) were present in 32.2%, 25.1%, 12.5% and 11.5% of the urban village adolescents and in 1.3%, 48.7%, 11.2%, and 16.5% of those residing in the rural village, respectively. About 66.8% of urban and 51.3% of rural adolescents had indulged in physical fights and 12.5% of urban and 6.6% of rural adolescents were in possession of assault weapons such as iron rods, chains or knives sometime in the 30 days prior to the interview.

The results of our study indicate that there is a high prevalence of risk behaviour in both urban and rural adolescents. However, except for smoking which was more common amongst rural adolescents all the other risk behaviours were more in those residing in urban areas. The reasons for this need to be ascertained, taking the geographical and socio-cultural factors into account, prior to considering the introduction of behaviour modification programmes.