Identifying the prevalence of high risk behaviors among adolescents of military families

Adolescence age is considered as an important period for initiation of high risk behaviors. This is due to egocentrism and misapprehension of adolescents about their behaviors. The purpose of this study was to investigate the prevalence of high risk behaviors and its co-occurrence among adolescents of military families.
This study was cross sectional-descriptive. 457 adolescents were selected from military families through Multi-phase sampling method and were assessed by Iranian Adolescent Risk-Taking Scale. Data was analyzed by SPSS¡ descriptive statistics methods¡ Pearson correlation coefficient and T-test for independent groups.
The results of this study showed that 23.4 percents the adolescents were at high risk during car driving. Furthermore 19.8 % of the adolescents were at high risk in sexual relationships¡ 5.5 % in alcohol use¡ 7% in cigarette use¡ 2.7 % in drug abuse and 7.7 % in aggression. The investigation of co-occurrence of high risk behaviors showed that there were significant and positive relationships among various risky behaviors.
According to the results of this study¡ more attention to risky car driving and sexual behaviors¡ which are highly prevalent¡ is necessary for adolescents’ health. Also¡ It seems necessary to perform preventive programs for school age children and to provide proper educations about high risk behaviors for adolescents and their parents.