Document Type
Article
Source Publication Title
EC Paediatrics (ECPE; Ecronicon)
First Page
489
Last Page
497
Abstract
Background: Adolescent smoking remains one of the major public health concerns worldwide. Young smokers are highly likely to become adult smokers and develop a wide range of health related problems at different stages of life. Evidence shows that factors such as peer smoking and parental smoking have significant impacts on adolescent smoking, however, there is scant knowledge about the role of adolescents’ beliefs and school-related factors, and therefore, hindering us to gain deeper insights for better smoking prevention and control. Objective: To examine the correlation between cigarette smoking and a set of contextual factors among the adolescents aged 13 - 15 years in six European countries. Methodology: The data used in this study was drawn from 2011 Global Youth Tobacco Survey (GYTS). Logistic regression was conducted to quantify the effects of the contextual factors, with particular focus on adolescents’ beliefs regarding smoking and schoolrelated factors. Results: On average, the smoking prevalence among the adolescents in the six European countries ranged from 11.7% (Ukraine) to 36.6% (Latvia). The regression results showed mixed effects across these countries in terms of belief- and school-related factors. For example, adolescents who believed that ‘smoking was harmful to them’ had a lower likelihood of smoking in Croatia (OR: 0.5, 95% CI: 0.26 - 0.96). However, such belief was related to a higher likelihood in Ukraine (OR: 2.12, 95% CI: 0.97 - 4.63). As expected, adolescents who believed that ‘second-hand smoking was harmful’ had a lower likelihood, and who believed that ‘smokers were more attractive’ had a higher likelihood. Further, the effects of school discussion on the dangers of smoking was significant only in two countries: Croatia (OR: 0.53, 95% CI: 0.39 - 0.73) and Ukraine (OR: 0.34, 95% CI: 0.17 - 0.7). A positive correlation was identified between smoking and seeing teacher or peer smoking on school premises. Adolescents who planned to continue education after current school program was negatively associated with the likelihood of smoking. Conclusion: This study enhances the understanding of the effects of adolescents’ belief- and school-related factors on adolescent smoking. The implications may support the development of intervention strategies to prevent the adolescent smoking behavior.
Disciplines
Engineering | Operations Research, Systems Engineering and Industrial Engineering
Publication Date
5-9-2018
Language
English
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Rahman, Md Mamunur; Ghasemi, Yasaman; and Zhou, Yuan, "Adolescent Smoking Behavior in European Countries: Influences of Belief- and School-Related Factors" (2018). Industrial, Manufacturing, and Systems Engineering Student Research. 4.
https://mavmatrix.uta.edu/industrialmanusys_studentresearch/4