The master's thesis investigates the correlation between social anxiety and alcohol consumption among students in Slovenia. In the theoretical part, I presented theoretical knowledge about social anxiety and its clinical form, social anxiety disorder. I explained the etiology of the disorder, its appearance and course, prevalence, its forms, and then moved on to comorbidity with alcohol use disorder. This was followed by an explanation of concepts related to alcohol consumption. Based on these starting points, I explained social anxiety and alcohol consumption in relation to the student population. In the final part, I focused on explaining the complex connection between social anxiety and alcohol consumption and presented a motivational model of alcohol consumption. The empirical part consisted of a quantitative study, the purpose of which was to investigate the relationship between social anxiety and alcohol consumption among the population of Slovenian students, and to investigate the role of drinking motives in this connection. In addition, I was interested in the prevalence of experiencing social anxiety among students and the gender differences regarding the variables of alcohol consumption, experiencing social anxiety and motives for alcohol consumption. The questionnaire was intended for students of three Slovenian public universities. The sample included 838 students, of which 614 were women and 224 were men, aged between 18 and 27. The results of the research showed a high prevalence of experiencing social anxiety among students (42.6 %), which is more common among female students than male students. An important finding of the research is that coping motives, social motives, and conformity motives significantly mediate the relationship between social anxiety and problems related to alcohol consumption, i.e. they influence the increase of problems. In the study, social anxiety was not significantly associated with problems related to alcohol consumption and the risk of developing an alcohol use disorder. It was interesting to note that among socially anxious individuals (5.9 %) there is a higher proportion of those with a (possible) diagnosis of alcohol use disorder than among the rest who are not socially anxious (4 %). A weak negative association of social anxiety with amount and frequency of drinking was found. Analyzing the data, I also confirmed statistically significant differences between the sexes in socially anxious individuals regarding the amount and frequency of drinking and the level of risk for developing an alcohol use disorder, both of which were more pronounced in socially anxious men. However, there were no gender differences in socially anxious individuals regarding problems related to alcohol consumption. A greater expression of social motives and conformity motives was found in socially anxious male students.
The research results emphasize the importance of awareness about the issue of social anxiety and its co-occurrence with problematic alcohol use. The findings significantly contribute to the development of the field of social pedagogy, which strives to improve the quality of life for individuals in the community. Understanding this complex relationship, and thereby improving professional knowledge, leads to more effective targeted preventive and intervention approaches to help students experiencing social anxiety and alcohol-related problems.
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