Study Site
The study was conducted among adolescent boys and young men within the five divisions of Kampala, the Capital City of Uganda with an estimated population of 1,650,800 [16]. The five divisions of Kampala City include Kawempe, Rubaga, Makindye, Nakawa and Central.
Study Design
This was a cross-sectional study that employed quantitative data collection methods.
Study Population
The study population included adolescent boys and young men aged 10-24 years. All adolescent boys and young men in any of the 5 divisions of Kampala aged 10-24 years and who were either in- or out-of-school were included in the study except those who failed to provide consent or did not understand English or Luganda. In-school adolescent boys and young men were those in the official school-age group and enrolled in any form of education while out-of-school ABYM were those in the official school-age group and not enrolled in any education for a period of at least one year preceding the date of the interview including drop outs and those who completed secondary education but lacked the resources to pursue post-secondary education, or who were unemployed or under employed [17].
Sample Size and Sampling Considerations:
The detailed sample size computation and sampling procedures have been described in a previous publication [18]. Briefly, we considered a type-1 error of 5%, p=0.14 (the proportion of adolescent boys that have ever used drugs in Kampala, Uganda) [19]; design effect of 2.0; a margin of error of 0.05, 5 divisions and a non-response of 0.10, to obtain minimum sample of 2,060 ABYM. We however adjusted this upwards to 2500 ABYM and used probability proportionate to size to allocate the sample size across the 5 divisions of Kampala.
Sampling strategy
Participants were enrolled into the study at household level. Household interviews were conducted in selected villages in all the five divisions of Kampala. We used a multi-stage sampling technique at the parish, village and household level to select the study participants.
ABYM who were studying in a school that was not located in Kampala were excluded from the study.
Since there was no sampling frame for out of school ABYM, we used the Lot Quality Assurance Sampling (LQAS) methodology [20] to sample out of school ABYM from areas of location and/or types of occupation (such as garages, boda-boda [motorcycle taxi] stages, mobile traders, quarries, construction sites). Locations and/or types of occupations were considered as sampling lots and we enrolled a minimum of 19 respondents from each lot within a ward until the required number of out-of-school ABYM in each division was attained [18].
Data collection
Data were collected between July and August 2020. We adopted the Global School-based Student Health Survey (GSHS) [21], a WHO validated self-administered questionnaire that collects information on health behaviors of school pupils including alcohol use. The GSHS is designed to capture data on students between 13-17 years. The questionnaire was expanded to collect data from out-of-school ABYM, age groups 10-24 years, and modified to an interview-administered questionnaire. Other questions on alcohol use were adapted from the WHO STEPwise approach to Surveillance questionnaire [22].
According to the Health Belief Model, engagement in behaviour is predicted by risk perception, perceived benefit of engagement in the behaviour, perceived barriers, cues to action [15] and self-efficacy [23]. Perception of risk as a predictor to engagement in behaviour is done considering a hazard. In this study, we considered obesity as the hazard because of a) the high level of alcohol use in Uganda [5], b) the documented association between alcohol consumption and weight gain [24] particularly among men [25], and c) the steady increase in the prevalence of obesity in Uganda from 8% in 1995 [26], 18.8% in 2011[27] and 24% in 2016 [28]. We assessed risk perception for obesity by adapting a multi-dimensional tool that incorporates likelihood, vulnerability and salience of risk judgments to quantify perceived risk [29]. We assessed perceived barriers by asking participants the extent to which they thought it would be difficult to limit alcohol consumption to 2 standard drinks or less per day. Self-efficacy was assessed by asking participants to rate how certain they were that they would limit their alcohol consumption to 2 standard drinks or less per day. Perceived benefits were assessed by asking participants whether they thought it would be beneficial to their health to limit alcohol consumption to 2 standard drinks or less and if so the extent to which this would be beneficial. Cues to action included alcohol advertisement and promotion as well as alcohol use behaviour by parents and siblings.
Statistical Analysis
We presented the socio-demographic characteristics using proportions. The items on the risk-perception tool were each scored with 1 for “yes” and 0 for “no” and higher scores indicated higher risk perception. The Pearson’s Chi-square statistic was used to test the difference in risk factors of alcohol use between groups by school status and age. The null hypothesis was that for each of the risk factors, the proportion of ABYM by school status and age was the same across the sub-categories. This hypothesis was rejected at a p-value ≤0.05.
The dependent variable was alcohol use within the 30 days that preceded the interview. To determine the association between alcohol use within the previous 30 days and the independent variables, we used odds ratios obtained via a logistic regression model as the measure of association. With the outcome of interest being rare, odds ratios were able to give good estimates of the associations and the standard errors [30]. The association analysis was conducted in two steps. In the first step, we fitted bivariate logistic regression models for each independent variable and alcohol use to obtain crude odds ratios. In the second step, all independent variables with a p-value <0.1 at bivariate analysis were included in an adjusted model to obtain adjusted odds ratios (AOR). The independent variables included in the model were informed by the health belief model i.e. perception of risk for obesity, perceived benefits of reducing alcohol use, perceived barriers, cues to action such alcohol use behaviour by siblings and parents and self-efficacy. Other variables outside of this framework but included in the model were school-going status and age. All analyses were done in STATA version 13 (StataCorp, College Station, Texas USA).