[Drinking alcohol--a frequent risk behaviour among upper secondary school students]

Health behaviours are being developed over the whole life span of a human. What is particularly important is the behaviours which are consolidated in childhood and adolescence, because a young person with lower self-control ability is more prone to taking risky actions which can result in immediate and future health consequences. The aim of the work is to analyse alcohol consumption among upper secondary school students and to determine the relation between that behaviour and selected aspects of their lives.

The study material was gathered by means of an anonymous survey carried out among students of the second grade in randomly selected general upper secondary schools in Białystok. A self-constructed questionnaire entitled "My health" was used in the study. The obtained results were subject to statistical analysis.

Most of the respondents (87.1%) have drunk alcohol before and have tried that substance more than two or three times in their lives. The highest number of students started to drink alcohol at the age of fifteen. 87.5% of girls and 86% of boys drank alcohol. Drinking was more common among teenagers living in single-parent families (92.3%) and families without close relationships. The percentage of drinkers was higher in the group of teenagers whose friends accepted drinking alcohol (85.7%). Among those who drank, there was the most percentage of students who smoked cigarettes and took drugs as well. The students who did well at school used alcohol more rarely (70.5%). People under age have easy access to alcohol- 88.5% of the respondents had no problems buying it at shops.

There is a necessity to attract attention to the problem of teenagers drinking alcohol and to take actions aimed at informing them about the risk and harms resulting from such behaviour before they start studying at lower secondary schools.