September 23, 2004 – A group of researchers from Laval University looked at the factors that encourage schoolchildren not to start smoking during the transition period from elementary to high school. This period seems to be decisive in the behavior that young adolescents will adopt with regard to cigarettes.
The cohort study, conducted among 373 students from the 5e year of elementary school, was published in the American journal Preventive Medicine. Children aged 10 were recruited from fifteen schools in the Mauricie region of Quebec. For 26 months, the researchers collected data on how young people and those around them perceive themselves to refrain from smoking.
Between the start and the end of the study, 76% of the students had not started to smoke cigarettes. The determining factors relating to this effect prompted the authors to recommend certain avenues of intervention for public health professionals and parents.
Thus, students who have the firm intention of not starting to smoke when they are in elementary school change their attitude when they arrive in secondary school. They are then much less certain that they will never smoke. This school transition is therefore an opportune moment to hold awareness campaigns against smoking. The study also shows that the supervision of a parent – even if the latter smokes! – has a positive effect on their children’s decision not to start smoking. This fact should, according to the authors, be emphasized to parents.
In addition, young teens who believe they can resist the temptation of a first cigarette will be more successful in not touching the cigarette. The intervention programs should therefore, according to the authors, enhance the control they exercise over their health. Finally, working in a socio-economic environment less advantaged than the average seems to hamper a teenager’s ability to abstain from smoking. This is why prevention campaigns should be tailor-made, taking into account the schools where they will be applied.
Although previous studies had already found that the influence of friends played a role in the intention to smoke or not, now this one indicates to us that the behavior of an older brother can also play a role in the maintenance of the decision not to smoke.
Marie france Coutu – PasseportSanté.net
Côté F, Godin G, Gagné C. Identification of factors promoting abstinence from smoking in a cohort of elementary schoolchildren, Preventive Medicine, October 2004, Vol. 39, No. 4, 695-703.
