The purpose of this study was to be useful in working out plans for improving national health by identifying public workers´ knowledge of and attitude to smoking, actual conditions of smoking within nonsmoking areas, and related factors. For the purpose, the questionnaire was carried out with 761 public officials of the division manager-level and lower working in Taegu Metropolitan City Hall in september, 1998.
The results are summarized as follows ;
Smokers of the subject group accounted for 55.1%, and the smoking rate had a significant relation with age and religion.
In view of the time when smokers started smoking, smokers who started smoking after graduation from a high school accounted for 70.6%. Smokers who smoke one pack of cigarettes per day and a cigarette to its two-thirds length was the most. In the smoking place of smokers at home, 54.9% of the smokers responded that they smoke in an outdoor space
The rate of smoking in an office was 68.3% and the rate of smoking within the nonsmoking areas of other public institutions was 43.0%.
The results of multiple regression analysis with the actual state of smoking within the nonsmoking area of other public institutions as an independent variable revealed that smokers who check for a nonsmoking area before smoking in the public institutions and who do not smoke in an office do not smoke within the nonsmoking areas of other public institutions.
In conclusion, more smoking and health education for public workers is needed to reduce the rate of national smoking and allow people to have a good smoking attitude, and it is required to arrange an institutional system who can strictly control public workers´ smoking in their offices or public places and to stress a function of surveillance and monitoring by nonsmokers.
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