Alves, Regina FerreiraPrecioso, JoséBecoña Iglesias, Elisardo2021-03-092021-03-092020Alves, R. F., Precioso, J., & Becoña, E. (2021). Knowledge, attitudes and practice of self-medication among university students in Portugal: A cross-sectional study. Nordic Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, 38(1), 50–65. https://doi.org/10.1177/1455072520965017http://hdl.handle.net/10347/24678Aims: To describe the knowledge, attitudes and practices of self-medication in college students and to analyse the predicting factors for the engagement in that behaviour. Design: This is a cross-sectional study involving students (n = 840) from a Portuguese university, selected through stratified and proportional sampling. Data were collected using a self-administered questionnaire containing, in addition to sociodemographic issues, a scale measuring knowledge about self-medication (α = .488), a scale measuring attitudes towards self-medication (α = .708) and questions about the patterns of self-medication practices (α = .445). Differences between outcomes and sociodemographics were analysed through independent t-tests and ANOVA. A generalised linear model was calculated to determine the predictive variables of self-medication. Results: Over half of the respondents ( 54.3%, n = 434) had used some form of self-medication during the preceding year. Students revealed poor knowledge about the referred practice, correctly answering 1.60 (SD = 0.936) questions in a total of 3, and favourable attitudes towards self-medication (M = 2.17, SD = 0.950, range 1–5). Attending engineering sciences (β = .718, 95% CI: 1.373–3.069, p < .001), being female (β = .866, 95% CI: 1.700–3.327, p < .001) and having negative attitudes towards self-medication (β = .367, 95% CI: 1.227–1.698, p < .001) predict the adoption of those practices. Conclusions: Self-medication is a common practice among university students, the level of self-medication knowledge is low and the low score of the level of attitudes revealed that students tended to have a correct positioning towards self-medication. Therefore, the recommendation to develop campaigns or educational programmes becomes obvious, in order to inform about the adverse effects of the use of non-prescribed medicineeng© The Author(s) 2020. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage)Atribución 4.0 Internacionalhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/KnowledgeRational use of medicineSelf-medicationUniversity studentsjournal article10.1177/14550725209650171458-6126open access