The purpose of this study was to serve as a basis for improving the health promotion behavior of adolescents, by examining to what extent middle school students actually had a smoke, in consideration of home, social and school life variables. The subjects in this study were 840 students randomly selected from two middle schools in rural area and three in urban area, North Chung-cheng Province, which included 420 girls and 420 boys. The data were collected for 17 days from June 12 through 30, 2000. And the responses from 799 students were selected for final analysis. The questionnaire used in this study was consisted of 35 items regarding four areas: general characteristics, home variables, social variables and school life variables. The collected data were analyzed with SAS PC + program. The frequency and percentage were employed to find out the general characteristics of the subjects, and x2 test was conducted to determine the relationship of smoking behavior to home, social and school life variables.
The findings of this study were as follows : 1. General Characteristics First, as a result of analyzing smoking behavior by grade, gender and place of residence, it’ s found that the number of smoker student increased with the advance of grade. Boy students had a smoke, more than girl did. The percentage of smoker student was 75.66% of the boys and 24.34% of the girls. The smoking rate was higher in urban area than in rural one. Second, as a result of investigating when the smoker students started smoking by grade, gender and place of residence, the largest number of them began smoking in elementary school. Third, as a result of analyzing the motivation of smoking by grade, gender and place of residence, their smoking behavior was mostly prompted by curiosity. 2. Family Variable and Smoking Behavior First, the more their family was peaceful, the less they smoked. This factor made a significant difference in smoking behavior.(p<0.001).
Second, regarding parental acceptance and parental rejection, the students whose parent had an acception attitude smoked less, and there was a significant difference between the groups(p<0.01). For parental autonomy and control, the students whose parent showed an autonomous attitude smoked less, and the difference between the two was significant(p<0.05). Third, whether or not their fathers smoked didn’t give a significant impact on their smoking, but mothers’ smoking yielded a significant difference(p<0.05).3. Social Variable and Smoking Behavior First, those who had more smoker friends smoken more, and the nonsmoker students had no smoker friend or had just one or two. This difference was significant(p<0.001). Second, smoking was affected by time they spent to get together with friends after school, and there was a significant difference in this point between the smoker and nonsmoker groups(p<0.001). Third, 19.74% of the smoker students hung around after school with 6 friends or more, and the rate of the nonsmoker students who got together after school with 6 friends or more was 9.89%. The difference between the two was statistically significant(p<0.001). Fourth, the percentage of having the best friend, among those who had ever been punished in or outside school, was 26.97% of the smokers and 9.87% of the nonsmokers. The disparity between the groups was significant(p<0.001). 4. School Life Variable and Smoking Behavior First, the smokers mostly ranked low in their class, while the nonsmokers ranked high in many cases. This difference was significant(p<0.01). Second, 4.61% of the smokers stayed away from school without due notice three times or more for the last three months, and the same case for the nonsmokers was 0.77%. The difference between the two was significant(p<0.001).
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