The impact of life satisfaction on substance abuse: delinquency as a mediator

摘要

The objectives of the study were two-folds: firstly, to ascertain the effect of life satisfaction on substance abuse among Malay youth. Secondly, to identify the role of delinquency on the relationship between life satisfaction and substance abuse. Self-administered questionnaires were distributed among youths at the youth programmes using a two-step sampling technique: area sampling and systematic sampling. The research hypotheses were tested using Structural Equation Modelling. The findings of the study revealed that there is no significance relationship between life satisfaction and substance abuse. There is a significant inverse relationship between life satisfaction and delinquency. Moreover, delinquency has a positive significant influence on substance abuse. The use of Bootstrapping analysis proved that delinquency plays a full mediating role in the relationship between life satisfaction and substance abuse. This study concluded that to reduce substance abuse, efforts should be undertaken to reduce delinquency behaviour by increasing youth life satisfaction.