PURPOSE: Since 1988, the annual or biannual
survey was conducted by Korean
Association of
Smoking and
Health (KASH) to examine the
smoking rate,
knowledge and
attitude on
smoking of
students attending middle and
high school in
Korea . The objective of this study was to investigate the
test-retest reliability of
self -administered
smoking questionnaire for Korean middle and
high school students .
METHODS: For the test-retest study, we sampled 30
school among 106
schools which participated in annual
survey on June of 2002. Among 30
schools , 26
schools (86.7%) were responded for this study.
RESULTS: 1) For the subjects of 1st and 2nd surveys, there were no difference on
smoking related variable including
attitude ,
knowledge , perceived
health status ,
father 's
smoking status,
friend 's
smoking status, willingness to
smoke , and readiness to quit
smoking 2) For middle
school students among
male , current
smoking rates were 3.5% for 1st
survey and 3.0% for 2nd
survey , which was statistically no significant. For
high school students , however, current
smoking rate of 1st
survey was higher (21.1%) than that of 2nd (18.2%), although the rate was not significantly differed. 3) For middle
school students among
female , current
smoking rates were 1.1% for 1st
survey and 3.3% for 2nd
survey , which was statistically no significant. Corresponding rate for
high school students were 9.8% and 11.4%, respectively.
CONCLUSION: The results indicated that
smoking questionnaire has been conducted by KASH is reliable for use in estimation for
prevalence of
smoking for middle and
high school students .