Development of schoolchildren's smoking habits: questionnaire studies in intervention and control groups.
The objective of the present study was to describe the development of smoking from the sixth grade (age 12) to the eighth (age 14), for girls and for boys, and to study the effect of a simple anti-smoking intervention carried out in the sixth grade. All the roughly 2000 schoolchildren in Kronoberg County, born in 1982, completed an annual anonymous classroom questionnaire on smoking habits in the years 1994-96. In 1994, there were two visits, each lasting 80 min, by a campaigner from A Non-Smoking Generation to the 59 schools which opted for intervention, and no visits to the 21 schools which declined intervention. Before the intervention there were no differences in the frequency of smokers between the intervention group and the control group. In 2 y the proportion of smokers then rose among the girls from 1% to 12% and among the boys from 2% to 7%. Two years after the intervention, the proportion of smokers in the intervention group was approximately two-thirds of that in the control group. When the statistical analysis was based on the individual pupils, the difference between the two groups was statistically significant, but if the schools were used as the unit of analysis, the result was non-significant. Even a small-scale intervention may have an effect on the development of smoking among schoolchildren, but other preventive measures in the schools probably also contributed to the positive development of smoking in the intervention group.
Edvardsson
I
I
Kronoberg County Council, Malmö University Hospital, Sweden.
Håkansson
A
A
D000293:Adolescent; D017677:Age Distribution; D002648:Child; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006266:Health Education / Q000379:methods; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D012306:Risk; D012574:Schools / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D017678:Sex Distribution; D012907:Smoking / Q000453:epidemiology; D016540:Smoking Cessation / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D000074606:Smoking Prevention; D018709:Statistics, Nonparametric; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D013548:Sweden / Q000453:epidemiology; D014029:Tobacco Use Disorder / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000517:prevention & control*