Abstract:
Abstract
This correlational descriptive research aimed to examine early smoking stage, and to investigate: 1) the relationship between attitude toward smoking, 2) self-efficacy in smoking avoidance, 3) self-esteem, 4) academic achievement, 4) self-determination in smoking avoidance, 5) parental smoking, 6)
peer smoking, 7) offering of smoking by friends, 8) prevalence estimation of smoking situation, and 9) early smoking stage among male students at lower secondary schools under the jurisdiction of The Trat
Education Service Area Office. A multistage random sampling method was used to recruit 338 samples who were male students in the academic year 2010. The questionaires consisted of demographic form, attitude toward smoking, self-efficacy in smoking avoidance, self-esteem, and self-determination in
smoking avoidance. Content validity and language accuracy of the instruments were approved by five experts. Cronbach's alpha coefficients used to estimate the internal consistency reliability for each of the scales were acceptable (a = 0.75 - 0.91). The data were collected from May to June, 2010. Descriptive statistics and Binary Logistic Regression were employed to analyze the data.
The results of this study revealed that more than one-third of male students were in early smoking stage (38.76%). The signification factors related to early smoking stage of the male students were offering of smoking by friends (OR=2.94), low self-efficacy in smoking avoidance (OR=2.31), agreement
of attitude towards smoking (OR=2.16) and peer smoking (OR= 2.14). Therefore, it can be concluded that these results contribute to more understanding of early smoking stage among male students at lower secondary schools. These findings then will be useful to develop effective primary prevention programs to protect early smoking stage of male students.