The 13th World Conference on Tobacco OR Health

Objective: Aim of this study was to evaluate the influence of selcted factors on smoking among young people.

Methods: The anonymous survey study assumed 49886 students (26333 men, 23553 women) aged 15-19 years old. The average age was 17.2+/-1.1. The respondentes came from 136 towns, randomly selected from all 16 provinces. The rate of questionnaire return was 96%. The results of the study were put to the statistical analysis. The following statistic procedures were used to identify the factors that influence the most intensively smoking of tobacco: test homogenity chi-square, Pareto analysis, discriminatory analysis, and classification trees. For the estimation of existence and intensity of interdependence between two or more categorical data the log-linear analysis was used. The 5% inference error was assumed with significance assigned at p<0.05.

Results: Prevalence of tobacco smoking in selected group was 14144 people (28.35%). Intention to give up smoking was declared by 9541 persons (67.46%). 16610 people (33.30%) spend more than 5h/24h among smokers. In selected group 22822 people (45.75%) declared that his/her father smokes ciggarettes, and 17602 people (35.28%) declared mother. Conclusion: Essential factors discriminating subgroups of smokers and non-smokers were: sex, age, school, financial status, time spend among smokers and smoking parents and/or siblings. Spending much time with smokers influences the decision of starting smoking and of its continuation. The results can be helpful in creating an efficient educational and preventive program for high school students.