Risk-taking and drug-use behaviour: an examination

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the relationship between several forms of drug-use behaviour and risk-taking propensity. Jackson's (1976) risk-taking measure was employed among a sample of high school students (N = 634) selected from a province-wide probability survey on student drug use. The authors predicted that risk-taking would be associated with: (i) the dependence potential of a given drug; (ii) level of drug use; (iii) polydrug use. No conclusive evidence was found confirming the first two hypotheses; however, the data clearly demonstrated that level of polydrug use was significantly related to risk scores. The authors suggest that risk-taking as a general personality trait may more readily distinguish non-users from users of various drugs than discriminate among degrees of use in the latter.