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Addiction
Research
Social support as a mediator between problem behaviour and gambling: a cross-sectional study among 14–16-year-old Finnish adolescents
  1. Tiina Räsänen1,
  2. Tomi Lintonen2,
  3. Asko Tolvanen3,
  4. Anne Konu1
  1. 1School of Health Sciences, University of Tampere, Tampere, Finland
  2. 2Finnish Foundation for Alcohol Studies, Helsinki, Finland
  3. 3Department of Psychology, University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland
  1. Correspondence to Dr Tiina Räsänen; rasanen.tiina.a{at}student.uta.fi

Abstract

Background During the adolescent period, risk-taking behaviour increases. These behaviours can compromise the successful transition from adolescence to adulthood. The purpose of this study was to examine social support as a mediator of the relation between problem behaviour and gambling frequency among Finnish adolescents.

Methods Data were obtained from the national School Health Promotion Study (SHPS) from the years 2010 and 2011 (N=102 545). Adolescents were classified in the most homogeneous groups based on their problem behaviour via latent class analysis.

Results Path analysis indicated that social support was negatively associated with problem behaviour, and problem behaviour and social support were negatively related (except for social support from friends among boys) to gambling. Social support from parents and school mediated, albeit weakly, the relations between problem behaviour and gambling among girls and boys.

Conclusions Problem behaviour may affect gambling through social support from school and parents. Thus prevention and intervention strategies should focus on strengthening adolescents' social support. In addition, because of the clustering of different problem behaviours instead of concentrating on a single form of problem behaviour multiple-behaviour interventions may have a much greater impact on public health.

  • PUBLIC HEALTH

This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2016-012468

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    Footnotes

    • Contributors TR, AT, TL and AK were involved in study conception and design. TR, AT, TL and AK analysed and interpreted the data. TR drafted the manuscript. AT, TL and AK critically revised the manuscript.

    • Funding This study was financially supported by the Finnish Foundation for Alcohol Studies. The Finnish Foundation for Alcohol Studies had no involvement in the study design, data handling, writing or submission of the manuscript. The grants awarded by the Finnish Foundation for Alcohol Studies for gambling research are based on a government contract for studying gambling-related harm.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Ethics approval The ethical committee of Tampere University Hospital.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

    • Data sharing statement No additional data are available.