Correlates of susceptibility to smoking among secondary school students in Kota Tinggi district, Johor, Malaysia.

BACKGROUND

Smoking among adolescents has been linked to a variety of adverse and long term health consequences. "Susceptibility to smoking" or the lack of cognitive commitment to abstain from smoking is an important predictor of adolescent smoking. In 2008, we conducted a study to determine the psycho-sociological factors associated with susceptibility to smoking among secondary school students in the district of Kota Tinggi, Johor.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

Two thousand seven hundred students were randomly selected by proportional stratified sampling. Analyses on 1,736 non-smoking students revealed that prevalence of adolescents susceptible to smoking was 16.3%.

RESULTS

Male gender (aOR=2.05, 95%CI= 1.23-3.39), poor academic achievement (aOR 1.60, 95%CI 1.05-2.44), ever-smoker (aOR 2.17, 95%CI 1.37-3.44) and having a smoking friend (aOR 1.76, 95%CI 1.10-2.83) were associated with susceptibility to smoking, while having the perception that smoking prohibition in school was strictly enforced (aOR 0.55, 95%CI 0.32-0.94), and had never seen friends smoking in a school compound (aOR 0.59, 95%CI 0.37-0.96) were considered protective factors

CONCLUSIONS

These results indicate that follow-up programmes need to capitalise on the modifiable factors related to susceptibility to smoking by getting all stakeholders to be actively involved to stamp out smoking initiation among adolescents.