Pattern of smoking cessation among male secondary school students in Suez

ABSTRACT

effective smoking cessation among adolescents provides an opportunity to reduce smoking levels when they become adult and reduces the negative consequences of smoking on the whole community. Better understanding of students' smoking cessation behavior is needed for the development of effective programs to support smoking cessation. this study tries to examine the level of smoking and its associated factors among male secondary school students in Suez City, and to describe smoking cessation behaviors and its associated factors among these students. Design, Setting, and participants: this is a cross-sectional study conducted between January and March 2002 among 1186 male secondary. School students in 3 governmental schools in Suez City. A self-reported questionnaire was used to collect data from students. Data were related to smoking behavior and its associated factors. Information about smoking cessation behavior was obtained in 4 categories that describe the steps of cessation process namely; intention to quit, undertaking quilt attempt[s], short-term smoking cessation and tong-term smoking cessation. Factors associated with smoking cessation were also investigated and included status of peer smoking, age at which the student started smoking and the student's perception of the community agreement or dis-agreement with smoking behavior. A logistic regression model investigated the association between smoking cessation steps and the associated factors. 19.7% of studied students reported that they were smoking and that they smoked an average of 10 cigarettes per week. The mean age of at which students first smoked was 13.4 years. The smoking status of the students' closest friends had the strongest relationship with students smoking and this relationship was consistent among different socio-economic groups of the students. A serious intention to quit was demonstrated by 67.1% of current smokers and almost 90% of those intended to quit undertook actual quit attempts. However, only 16.99%, of those ever smoked and undertook quit attempt succeeded to stop smoking for short periods and only 4.1% had achieved among-term smoking cessation for at least 12 months. The likelihood of success of smoking cessation was strongly dependent on the extent of smoking among peers. Students who had become smoker at earlier ages were more likely to undertake a quit attempt than those who started at older ages. Smoking cessation behavior showed no association with students' perception of the community acceptance of smoking. in this study, a high rate of smoker students wanted to quilt, but they were unsuccessful in doing so. Therefore a program is required to provide skills of smoking cessation to smoking students