Abstract
Substance abuse has been identified to interfere with the students’ physical,
cognitive and affective development. The main aim of this study was to determine the
perception of gender on the effects of substance abuse on their physical, cognitive and
affective development.
Methodology: The research philosophy adopted was positivism and the approach was
deductive. A self-administered questionnaire containing items developed from literature
review was administered to 199 built environment and civil engineering students at a
South African university. The data was analysed using the Statistical Package for the
Social Sciences (SPSS) version 21. Cronbach alpha was used to achieve the reliability
for internal consistency of the measured constructs i.e. physical, cognitive and affective
development. Item correlation identified the correlation of the measures of physical,
cognitive and affective development. T-test was further conducted to test gender
perception on the effects of substance abuse on the physical, cognitive and affective
development.
Findings: The measures of physical, cognitive and affective development had a strong
relationship and were reliable measures. Furthermore, the results suggest that there was
no statistical significant difference on the perception of the effect of substance abuse on
cognitive development as informed by male and female students. However, there was a
significant difference on their perception on substance abuse on physical and affective
development.
Limitation(s): The respondents were from one comprehensive university, therefore the
findings cannot be generalized for all the tertiary institutions in South Africa...