Effects of socialization in the household on youth susceptibility to smoking: a secondary analysis of the 2004/05 Canadian Youth Smoking Survey.

OBJECTIVE: To determine associations between younger youths' susceptibility to smoking and four household variables related to tobacco socialization: parental and sibling smoking, restrictions on smoking in the home and exposure to smoking in vehicles. METHODS: A secondary analysis of the 2004/05 Canadian Youth Smoking Survey used logistic regression to investigate the relationships between youth susceptibility to smoking, gender, and four household variables related to tobacco socialization. Susceptibility to smoking was operationalized by three levels of smoking experience and intention: non-susceptible non-smoker, susceptible non-smoker and experimenter/smoker. The national survey included 29 243 grade 5 to 9 students from randomly sampled public and private schools in ten provinces. RESULTS: For non-smokers, the odds of being susceptible to smoking increased with having a sibling who smokes, a lack of a total household smoking ban and riding in a vehicle with a smoker in the previous week, when adjusting for all other variables in the model. These variables also increased the odds of being an experimenter/smoker versus a susceptible non-smoker. Parent smoking status was not significant in these models. CONCLUSION: Denormalization messages, through enforced home and vehicle smoking bans, appear to support youth in maintaining a resolve to not smoke, regardless of parental smoking status.

Discrepancies between youth and parent perceptions of their household environment relevant to smoking: a secondary analysis of the 2004/05 Canadian Youth Smoking Survey.

OBJECTIVE: To compare the perceptions of youth in grades 5 to 9 and parents regarding their household environment relevant to smoking socialization. METHODS: We conducted secondary analysis of the 2004/05 Canadian Youth Smoking Survey and corresponding parent survey, and used the McNemar Test to compare youth and parent responses. RESULTS: Results showed statistically significant patterns of disagreement between youth and parent responses at most levels of youth smoking uptake regarding parental smoking, household rules around smoking, and smoking in the home and vehicles. When youth and parents disagreed, the following patterns emerged: non-susceptible, non-smoking youth perceived their parents as non-smokers and youth with more smoking experience perceived their parents as smokers; youth at all levels of smoking uptake perceived fewer rules in the home than parents indicated, more smoking in the home than parents indicated, and exposure to smoking in vehicles in contrast to vehicle smoking bans indicated by parents. CONCLUSION: To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to compare the perceptions of youth and parents regarding household variables related to the socialization of tobacco use. The discrepancies between youth and parent responses suggest that there is room to improve on establishing household environments that clearly condemn the use of tobacco, which may affect youth susceptibility to future smoking.