This study is to empirally examine the relationship among family functioning, adolescent's depression, and their drinking and smoking. The subjects for the study were 577 students attending junior and senior high schools located at Pohang City. Data c...
This study is to empirally examine the relationship among family functioning, adolescent's depression, and their drinking and smoking. The subjects for the study were 577 students attending junior and senior high schools located at Pohang City. Data collected were processed via SPSSWIN program and LISREL program and were analyzed by the methods of frequency, percentile, mean, standard deviation, crosstab, one-way ANOVA and Scheffe-test, Pearson's Correlation, regression, and path analysis.
The major findings of the study were as follows :
1. It was found that the family functioning was normal on the whole, and the degree of the adolescent's depression was rarely high. It was also discovered that 264(45.8%) of total students were drinker and 87(15.3%) of them were smoker.
2. Regarding the relationship between family functioning and adolescent's depression, the significant correlation between the two was found, pointing out that both 'family cohesion' and 'family adaptability' were negatively related to adolescent's depression. That is, the higher the adaptability and cohesion of family functioning was, the lower the adolescent's depression was. In addition, it was also found that 'family cohesion' of family functioning was the strongest in predicting adolescent's depression with its explanatory power of 9.3 percent.
3. It was found that both adolescent's drinking and smoking were positively related to their depression, indicating that the higher the degree of adolescent's depression was, the more frequently they tended to have a drink, the more frequently they had a drink, the more frequently they had heavy drinking, and the more frequently they tended to have a smoke. In addition, it was also found that both adolescent's drinking and smoking were affected by the degree of their depression.
4. Regarding the relationship between family functioning and adolescent's drinking and smoking, 'family cohesion' was only significantly and negatively related to adolescent's drinking and smoking, pointing out that the higher the cohesion of family functioning was, the more frequently the adolescent tended to have a drink, the more frequently they had a drink, the more frequently they had heavy drinking, and the more frequently they tended to have a smoke.
5. Regarding the path that family functioning and adolescent's depression affect their drinking and smoking, it was found that 'family cohesion' directly influenced adolescent's depression, and adolescent's depression directly influenced their drinking level and quantity of smoking. And also 'family cohesion' indirectly influenced the adolescent's drinking level and quantity of smoking via their depression.