This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Citation map  • Citing articles on HighWire  • Citing articles on ISI (2)  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in this journal  Topic Collections  • Adolescent Medicine  • Tobacco  • Alert me on articles by topic  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

Tracie A. Barnett, PhD; Lise Gauvin, PhD; Marie Lambert, MD; Jennifer O’Loughlin, PhD; Gilles Paradis, MSc, MD; Jennifer J. McGrath, PhD, MPH

Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 2007;161(9):842-848.

Objective  To investigate the association between smoking behavior among secondary school students and school smoking policies.

Design  Cross-sectional provincially representative study.

Setting  Quebec secondary schools.

Participants  Complete data were available for 763 of 1058 students aged 13 years in 50 schools and for 768 of 1160 students aged 16 years in 57 schools. School principals provided data on school smoking policies.

Main Exposure  School smoking policies.

Outcome Measure  Student tobacco use.

Results  Of students aged 13 years, 3.8% of boys and 7.1% of girls smoked daily; 21.0% of boys and 25.2% of girls aged 16 years smoked daily. Of schools, 28.0% permitted staff to smoke indoors, 84.1% permitted staff to smoke outdoors on school grounds, and 83.2% permitted students to smoke outdoors on school grounds. Daily smoking was not associated with policies targeting student smoking or those targeting indoor smoking by staff. In multilevel analyses, girls aged 13 years were almost 5 times more likely to be daily smokers if they attended schools at which staff were permitted to smoke outdoors.

Conclusions  Younger girls may be more susceptible to social influences at school related to tobacco use. School policies banning smoking by teachers and other school personnel within and outside the school should be an important component of comprehensive adolescent smoking prevention programs.

Author Affiliations: Department of Social and Preventive Medicine and Groupe de Recherche Interdisciplinaire en Santé, Université de Montréal, and Centre de Recherche Léa-Roback (Drs Barnett and Gauvin); Department of Pediatrics, Sainte-Justine Hospital and Université de Montréal (Dr Lambert); Department of Epidemiology, Biostatistics, and Occupational Health, McGill University, and Institut National de la Santé Publique du Québec (Drs O’Loughlin and Paradis); and Department of Psychology, Concordia University (Dr McGrath), Montréal, Québec. Dr Barnett is now with CHU Sainte-Justine Hospital Research Center, Montréal. Dr O’Loughlin is now with the Department of Social and Preventive Medicine, Université de Montréal, CHUM Research Center.

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati     What's this?

THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES

Social-Cognitive and School Factors in Initiation of Smoking among Adolescents: A Prospective Cohort Study
Bidstrup et al.
Cancer Epidemiol. Biomarkers Prev. 2009;18:384-392.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT