Relative Influence of Self-Esteem and Norm-Consciousness on Prevalence of Youth Risk Behavior among Japanese High School Students

抄録

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relative influences of norm-consciousness and self-esteem on the prevalence of risk behaviors among Japanese adolescents. We analyzed data from the 2001 Japan Youth Risk Behavior Survey (JYRBS), which was a nationwide survey conducted by Nozu et al. for 11,113 high school students. We focused on the following items of risk behavior from among 32 all items in JYRBS: “lack of vigorous physical activity,” “skipping breakfast,” “current cigarette use,” “current alcohol use,” “lifetime thinner use,” “ever had sexual intercourse,” “rarely or never wore seatbelts,” “in a physical fight,” and “seriously considered attempting suicide.” When the influences of each subdomain of norm-consciousness and self-esteem on the prevalence of risk behaviors among high school students were examined by multiple regression analysis, it was found that, in particular, the poor conditions of norm-consciousness in school and community and the low self-esteem in parents were strongly related to the risk behaviors. The results suggest that the improvements of norm-consciousness with self-esteem, which has been pointed out in recent years, are needed to prevent the risk behaviors among adolescents.