[Extracurricular activities of adolescents useful for smoking prevention programs. OCTOPUS team].
BACKGROUND
The cigarette smoking habit continues to be prevalent to a greater degree than would be desirable among teenagers. Innovative prevention programs are needed. This descriptive cross-sectional study sets out the behavior variables related to the cigarette smoking habit and the extracurricular activities in which teenagers are most frequently involved which are useful for setting out extracurricular prevention programs.


METHODS
The data was collected by means of a questionnaire validated in a representative sample of school age youths (ages 10-11 and 13-14) from Asturias. The variables entailed in cigarette smoking were analyzed using the regression method.


RESULTS
The starting smoker percentage is 14.5%-42.5%, regular smokers totaling 1.1% and 12.4%, respectively. Two models were constructed with the variables significantly related to smoking behavior, which are properly classified into smoker/non-smoker by 98.85% and 91.39% of the children, by ages. The environmental variables (availability of cigarettes and alcoholic beverages and regular visits to places entailing risk) are the major aspects comprising the model. The most common extracurricular activities are: watching TV, reading and listening to music and watching or playing sports.


CONCLUSIONS
The findings provide keys to planning extracurricular activities tailored to fit in with the activities most popular among teens: TV commercials and ads on music media (CD's, tapes, etc.) and printed information mailed directly to teens at their homes, with messages conveyed by opinion-leaders among teens in the fields of sports, music and television.
López González
M L
ML
Facultad de Medicina, Area de Medicina Preventiva, Universidad de Oviedo. lopez@correo.uniovi.es
López
T
T
Comas Fuentes
A
A
Herrero Puente
P
P
González Blázquez
J
J
Cueto Espinar
A
A
Thomas
H
H
Douglas
J
J
Markham
W
W
Charlton
A
A
de Vries
H
H
Leijs
I
I
Mester
I
I
Ausems
M
M
D000293:Adolescent; D000294:Adolescent Behavior; D000428:Alcohol Drinking; D002648:Child; D016001:Confidence Intervals; D006266:Health Education; D006801:Humans; D009146:Music; D011845:Radio; D012044:Regression Analysis; D000074606:Smoking Prevention; D013030:Spain; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D013690:Television