Abstract: The former drug addicts’ abilities to overcome all obstacle in life while achieving life that is free from drugs would be influenced by self-efficacy. It means that the more a former addicts is assures of himself and his future, the wider his opportunity to succeed in recovering from drugs’ effect. On that note, this research was done to identify the level of self-efficacy amongst relapsed addicts and to identify the relationships between addicts self-efficacy and relapsed addiction tendencies. Data collected were analyzed using SPSS for windows. The sample consisted of 400 drug addicts on relapse cases which were selected through the stratified random sampling and systematic random sampling method from eight Narcotic Rehabilitation Centers (NRC) throughout Peninsular, Malaysia. This research was conducted using quantitative cross-sectional survey design. The level of addicts’ self-efficacy were measured using General Efficacy Scale (GES) with strong reliability rate at 856. The date gathered was analyzed using Pearson correlation analysis and descriptive tests. The results showed 86.3% respondents showed moderate self efficacy level to low. The results from Pearson correlation tests found that there is negative, strong and significant relationship between self-efficacy ( r = -0.790; p<0.05) with relapsed addiction. These results gave the impression that low self-efficacy factor can give negative effect to the addicts in order for them to continue to be free from drugs, especially when they facing life challenges and their surroundings after they were released from drug rehabilitation centers.

INTRODUCTION

In Malaysia, drugs were named as nation’s number one enemy in 1983 and ever since, the fight against drugs was conducted aggressively by widen the awareness scope at all age level, throughout. At the same time, the drug abuse problem spreads fast in tandem with nation’s social development. Drugs have becoming a threat, not only to an individual or family; it is also a threat to the country (Mahmood et al., 1999). Although, drug treatment and rehabilitation programme in Malaysia has been introduced since, 1975 to help rehabilitate addicts from drug abuse, the number of relapsed addictions continue to show significant increase since, its 35 years inception. For example of 15,736 drug addicts identified in 2008, 8,613 were relapsed addicts compared to 7,123 new addicts. Whereas, the success rates of rehabilitation in community cases in 2005 showed only 32.6% addicts manage to free themselves from drug abuse after they received treatment and rehabilitation services. Why this phenomenon happened. In fact, identification on how far self-efficacy rate amongst relapsed addicts is significant as it is part of the effort to prevent relapsed addiction tendency. Apart from that it is important indicator in reflecting the change of behavior amongst the former addicts because this is the forecast that would determine the initial ambition among them, to do something (not to involved again with drugs) even though, they are facing with obstacle and challenges while going on with their lives after their released.

Literature review: Self-efficacy is defined as the personal belief that one can successfully perform a specific action underspecified conditions (Bandura, 1997). Self-efficacy can be conclude as one period an individual could act efficiently when facing adversity which is the belief of one’s ability to plan and come out with a set of action that is needed in order to be able to achieved certain level of performance through therapy process (Bandura, 1977).

The self-efficacy concept always being related to relapsed addiction tendency. Chuah in his research found that inmates has no self-efficacy and enough skills to be independent in their interaction with society. The different effect of treatments on individuals showed that the problem with rehabilitation and treatment is not easy to overcome because the possibility for those who were released from drugs to go back to the old habit is high. In other words, rehabilitation from the physical dependency might be easy but the rehabilitation from the physiological aspect is not easy to be achieved even though addicts has been going through rehabilitation and treatment programmes available.

Research done on sixty alcoholics showed individuals who have high self-efficacy after rehabilitation treatment would be facing low risk to be addicts again (Allsop et al., 2000). Studies conducted by Nurhazlina and Azlinda found that one of the factors that cause addicts to use drugs again because of no confidence that they can live without drugs. Most of them are not strong enough withstand the trials that come and no willingness to stop them back to re-use of drugs. Research findings are viewed in parallel with the study by Cheung et al. (2003) that self-confidence is important as a fortress to keep away from drugs.

The findings from the research done by Allsop et al. (2000) is also parallel with findings from various researchers who stated that an alcoholic who is undergoing rehabilitation treatment program and has high self-efficacy is expected to give positive result towards rehabilitation treatment to stop addicting to alcohol (Connors et al., 1996; Greenfield et al., 2000; Rychtarik et al., 1992; Solomon and Annis, 1990).

The self-efficacy theory that was introduced by Bandura (1977) was used in this research to support self-efficacy variable. According to the theory, individuals who has various success experience is expected to have positive self-efficacy forecast in various situations compared to individuals who has limited success experiences. According to Badura, individuals who feels that they are able to have supportive social relationships are those who most likely to have enough self-efficacy to psychologically functional.

This relationship would increase individual’s self-efficacy in facing challenges. This means that self-efficacy would also be functional directly through social support influence in inducing positive behavior (Schwarzer, 1992). In other words, addicts for instance would be able to overcome their problem effectively if they believed in the skills that they have and received positive social supports.

The hope for success has important effect towards continuous efforts and diligence on behavior changes and the hope can be intensify with the existence of strong support system from surrounding society. Positive social support system would be able to help intensify addicts self-efficacy to face challenges in going on with their lives. Analytically, the objective for this research are:

Research hypotheses
Ho₁: There is no significant relation between self-efficacy and relapsed addiction.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

This research was conducted using cross-sectional survey in quantitative and analysed using statistic correlation test. According to an Malhotra et al. (1996), the cross-sectional involves the data collection method on one type of sample from the population that has to be experimented once based on the existing respondents’ attribute. Meanwhile, correlation analysis according to Cohen and Manion is being used to see the relation or influence from one factor to another. Through correlation analysis, the idea on the strength and the direction of relation that exist between two variable that being looked into could be determined.

This research used questionnaires and significant tests to examine the hypotheses. The effectiveness of the drugs rehabilitation program is being measured with 26 item of questions that has been developed by Bahaman, dll. with the rate of the overall reability of the rehabilitation program of 0.905. The item used for both scales was a Likert scale when the choices were arranged according to suitability which was:

The level of the drug rehabilitation program were measured based on the minimum score interpretation as shown in Table 1.

To determine whether there is a significant relationship between the overall drug rehabilitation program on relapsed addiction, the correlation Pearson test based on Guildford (1973)’s Rule of Thumb was being used like in Table 2.

Population and test sample: The population in this research refers to relapsed addicts, the drug addicts that still undergoing the treatment and rehabilitation services in Drug rehabilitation centers in Peninsular, Malaysia.

Table 1:	Minimum score interpretation table for the effectiveness of drugs rehabilitation program

Table 2:	Correlation Pearson table, Guildford (1973)’s Rule of Thumb

Table 3:	Location of the sample (n = 400)

Two ways of sampling were used in this research. The 1st was stratified random sampling where all element in the population was separated according to zones. Two drug rehabilitation centers with the highest number of inmates were chosen to represents each zone.

To fulfilled this research, eight rehabilitation centers, representing four zones were selected to be the research samples (Table 3). After the number of sample for each region (zone) were determined, the second sampling (systematic random sampling) were used to select the members (relapsed addicts) from region (zone) that involved. In determining the sample size, researchers used sample size determination table by Cohen et al. (2001) with view of the significant level at p<0.05 (significance level = 95%).

Based on the sample size determination table if the population for the research is 4,552 respondents and the significance level needed is 0.05, the number of respondents need is 357. To minimise the mistakes and to strengthen the research, researchers has added the research sample to 400 respondents. According to Mohamad Najib by enlarging the sample size, it can raise the score validity and the reliability of any research.

Reliability: To build the measurement reliability in research, test methods through pilot study and internal consistency approach were used. In this research, its measurement reliability was to use coefficient Cronbach alpha to test each question item.

The thirty respondents from the Drug addiction and rehabilitation centers in Sungai Besi, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia whose share the same characteristic with the real research subject were used to test the reliability of the questionnaires’ form. Whereas using the internal consistency approach each item that has low correlation rate and low reliability would be discharged from the test to raise the reliability rate. In this research the Cronbach alpha, >0.7 rate used as indicator for the research measurement.

Data analysis: Research data was analysed using Statistical Package for the Social Science for Windows (SPSS for Windows). Descriptive statistic were used to determined the frequency, percentage and average. Meanwhile, inference statistic using Pearson correlation test is to determine the relation between the effectiveness of drugs rehabilitation program and the relapsed addiction tendency.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Respondents’ background: Table 4 showed information on the respondents’ background. Most of the respondents involved in this research were from those ≥30s (85.6%). The minimum age amongst the respondents involved was 20 and the maximum age was 60. Most of them were Malays and Muslims (79.5%) and were bachelors or still unmarried (64.5%). The education background showed most respondents were minimally educated-primary school, education till secondary school education with Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (90.5%). About 47.3% of them used to work as temporary workers.

Level of relapsed drug addicts’ self-efficacy: Table 5 showed relapsed drug addicts’ self-efficacy level that has been examined. The minimum overall rate for relapsed drug addicts’ self-efficacy in this research is 1.96 with standard deviation of 0.56. The analysis done on 400 relapsed drug addicts showed that relapsed drug addicts’ self-efficacy level that has been examined were at medium to low level which is 86.3% with minimum score at 1.96. However, only 13.8% relapsed addicts that has been examined has high level of self-efficacy.

The findings of this research reflects that relapsed drug addicts are indeed has less self-efficacy to plan their everyday lives, especially when facing adversity, pressures and life challenges after they were released. The findings also showed that 74.5% of the respondents admitted that they are easily defeated in certain situation and another 53.8% admitted that they have less confidence on their ability in doing something. This showed that the addicts’ spirit and ability to change and avoid drugs are still at weaker level. As what has been identified by some earlier researchers (Allsop et al., 2000; Hawkins and Catalano, 1985; Dennis, 1989), this situation if left unattended would be able to influenced them to get back to drug addiction.

Table 4:	Respondents’ Background (n = 400)

Table 5:	The level of self-efficacy on drug relapse (n = 400)

Table 6:	Relationship between self-efficacy towards relapsed addiction tendencies (n = 400)

Relationship between addicts’ self -efficacy and relapsed addiction tendencies: Table 6 showed the research’s result that there is a negative and significant relationship between self-efficacy (r = 0.790, p<0.05) with relapsed addiction tendencies. This negative relationship gave the indicator that the lower the self-efficacy level of the addicts, the higher their tendencies to become relapsed addicts.

In summary, this result showed that the self-efficacy factor is identified having association towards relapsed addiction tendencies. Thus, based on the research, the findings rejected the 1st Hypotheses (H₁) that forecasted there is a significant relation between self-efficacy and relapsed addiction tendencies.

Allsop et al. (2000) in their research proves that addicts with low self-efficacy are at risk to relapsed. As suggested by Hawkins and Catalano (1985) if the addicts has high level of self-efficacy coupled with family support, it would give positive result towards rehabilitation treatment they received and indirectly prevented them from misusing drugs again. In local context, research findings also supports the findings of Chuah’s research which found that most addicts has low self-efficacy and lack of skill to enable them to be independent in their relationship with society, influenced them to reuse drugs and getting into relapsed. In this study, the research findings showed that most former addicts showed less strong self-efficacy to overcome problems, easily giving up and could not solve problems in positive and smart manner. Because of these issues, they are prone to reuse. Overall, it can be concluded that low self-efficacy amongst former addicts are linked with their own experiences of repeatedly failed to free themselves from drug abuse. For example, 53.3% of respondents admitted that they are easily give it up if they failed to learn new things. It means that most of them are easily giving it up when facing failures in doing something (in the effort to stop misusing) and the situation indirectly effected their self-efficacy to rehabilitated completely from drug abuse.

This situation can be described and supports the self-efficacy theory founded by Bandura (1977). According to him, individual who has various success experiences is expected to have more positive self-efficacy forecast in various situation compared to individual who has limited success experiences. This theory gave the impression that a former drug addict who always facing failures in his efforts to free himself from drug abuse would faced weak spirit and self-efficacy as a result of the repeated failures. This situation would get complicated when the surroundings are not supportive such as lukewarm acceptance from the society (Fauziah and Naresh, 2009; Mahmood et al., 1999; Hawkins and Catalano, 1985) and the difficulties to find jobs to enable them to starts their new lives (Ibrahim, 2008; Marks, 2002).

According to Bandura (1977), individual who felt that he is able to get supportive social relationships is more likely to have enough self-efficacy to function psychologically. This relationship would enhanced one’s self confidence in facing challenges in his life. It means self-efficacy has roles and functioning directly through the influence of social support in encouraging an individual to act positively. In other words, former addicts should be able to overcome problems more effective if they believed the skills they have within themselves and receives positive social supports from their surroundings such as from friends, families, immediate neighbors and society at large. It means, positive social support system would be able to enhance self-efficacy of an addict to continue with life and face adversities and challenges in the future. Meanwhile, Hawkins and Catalano (1985) thought that acceptance and supports from society would be able to help enhance self-efficacy and hope amongst addicts to refrain themselves from misusing drugs. However in the research context, it was disappointing that most former addicts does not received encouraging social supports from the society (Ibrahim, 2008; Schwarzer, 1992) that made them more alienated and their self-efficacy to continue to rehabilitate, plunged. This situation is the one that influencing them to reusing drugs and becoming relapsed addicts.

CONCLUSION

The problem of relapsed addiction in Malaysia is a big challenge to the nation. This problem if not handled effectively would be able to damage the individuals involves and it even could damage the society and nation’s harmony. Thus to handle this problem from becoming more complicated is suggested that the modules prepared in Narcotic rehabilitation centers in Malaysia should stress more on how to mould or to form strategy to develop more steady self-efficacy amongst the relapsed drug addicts so they would be able to better manage their lives after their release from drug rehabilitation centers.

It is because the research findings showed weak self-efficacy amongst addicts is one factor that has significant relationship towards relapsed addiction. Meanwhile, research done by Fauziah and Kumar (2009) showed that self-efficacy factor is the biggest contributing factor (62.4%) towards relapsed addiction amongst addicts in Malaysia, compared to society’s factor (2.3%) and family’s factor (0.7%). With efforts to enhance the preparation of total human development strategy amongst relapsed drug addicts, it could increase addicts’ self-efficacy to live without drugs. It means that serious efforts should be done to restructure weak self-efficacy to enable the addicts to be stronger when facing life challenges after their release. Although, the government of Malaysia had tried their level best through many ways to curb drug addiction problem, the efforts would be in vain without supports from the community to share the burden to fight against drug abuse. Thus, community support share the effort to help and guide addicts is much needed. Community support would inject new breath amongst the addicts to continue their journey for new and better beginning, free from drugs.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The researchers have been supported generously by Institute for Social Science Studies, Universiti Putra Malaysia and a National Anti-Drug Agency, Malaysia. The researchers would like to express their sincere appreciation for all the support provided.