Study: ECATD 2024

The Study on Alcohol, Tobacco, Drugs and Other Addictive Behaviours and Dependencies - Portugal 2024 (ECATD-CAD) was released to the public today. After validating the completed questionnaires, a national sample of 11,083 students from 1,992 public schools located in all regions of mainland Portugal and the Autonomous Regions of the Azores and Madeira was obtained.

The ECATD-CAD is a cross-sectional study that results from the application of the ESPAD questionnaire (European school survey project on alcohol and other Drugs) to representative samples of Portuguese public school students aged between 13 and 18. Essentially, this study is an extension of ESPAD to students from other age groups, so the methodological procedures are broadly the same. For the first time, in 2024, the questionnaire was administered online.

The results show that, as far as addictive behaviours among public school pupils (13-18 years old) are concerned, the situation today is generally less serious, with the riskiest behaviours being confined to a minority and being more sporadic than frequent. On the other hand, there are phenomena that, compared to the previous study, have become more prevalent, such as the consumption of strong painkillers in order to get "high", electronic gambling and gambling. The ECATD-CAD/2024 data are in line with the conclusions of the previous study (implemented in 2019), although there is a clear downward trend in the figures for most of the indicators analysed.

Available HERE.