A Comparison of Substance Abusers and Non-Substance Abusers Students in Relation with Personality Traits

The purpose of this research was to compare substance abuser and non-substance abuser students in relation to personality traits. Participants were students at Imam Khomeini International University in Ghazvin. Three hundreds and seventy students (172 males,198 females) were selected using stratified random sampling. The participants completed the Rapid Substance Abuse Assessment Questionnaire (Taremian, 2008) and the short form of the NEO Five Factor Inventory (Costa & McCrae, 1992). Using the Rapid Substance Abuse Assessment, the participants were divided into four groups: Non-substance abuser (group 1: n=205), substance abuser (group 2: n=77), former substance abuser (group 3: n=31), and dependents to substance (group 4: n= 33). The results of one-way analysis of variance indicated that there were significant differences in conscientiousness, agreeableness and neuroticism between groups. Non-abuser students were more agreeable and conscientious than substance abusers and substance dependents. Non-abuser students had lower scores in neuroticism in comparison with substance dependents. Also, there was no significant difference between the former substance abusers and the other three groups in all of the five factors. Overall, the findings suggest that the personality traits are one of the determinants of students’ tendencies to substance abuse and dependence.