A Preliminary Analysis on Smoking Behavior and its Psychosocial Factors among Junior High School Students in the Four Areas of China

Objective To examine students' smoking behavior and explore the psychosocial factors associated with this behavior.Methods A sample survey based on stratified probability samples of 11978 junior high school students in the four areas of China was conducted between May and July in 1999.Results The results show that 22.5% of surveyed respondents,32.5% of males and 13.0% of females,reported having ever tried smoking; 54.8% of them started to experiment smoking before the age of 12 years old.Among all the smokers,72.1% of them want to quit smoking and 60.9% had ever tried to quit smoking during the past 12 months.Results of logistic regression analyses show that peer's smoking behaviour,parents' smoking,gender,perceived the benefit of smoking and exposure of smoking2related media messages were significant predictors on smoking behaviour.Conclusion These findings reveal that there is a need for greater emphasis on smoking prevention education and interventions by implementing health promotion approach.