Role of problematic internet usage in the risk of addiction to online drug and substance abuse among undergraduate students in Universities in Kenya

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to investigate the role of problematic internet usage in the risk of addiction to online drug and substance abuse among undergraduate students in universities in Kenya. The study utilized Behaviourist Theory and Social Learning Theory. Ex-post facto research design was used for this study. The target population for the study was 97284 comprising all the undergraduate students in four universities and the accessible population was 2^nd and 3^rd year students comprising of 18911. The sample size comprised of 391 undergraduate students, 16 peer counsellors and four (4) student counsellors making a total of 411 participants. Data was collected by use of a questionnaire, an in-depth interview schedule and focus group discussion. The questionnaire was administered to undergraduate students, in-depth interview schedule was used on the student counsellors and focus group discussion was conducted among peer counsellors. Each focus group discussion comprised of four participants. Purposive sampling was used to select the universities of study. Purposive and simple random sampling was used to select the respondents. One university with similar  characteristics with the sampled universities was purposively selected for piloting to ensure reliability of the research instruments. The pre-test was administered to and the instruments were modified accordingly. The reliability coefficient was online drug and substance abuse was 0.750. Descriptive statistics of frequencies, percentages and means were used to analyse data. Chi square was used to test the null hypotheses while t-test was used to compare the study variables. Quantitative data was analysed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) Version 23. Qualitative data was coded and thematically analysed.