Psychosocial, school, and parent factors associated with recent smoking among early-adolescent boys and girls

Abstract

Background: Experimentation with smoking often begins during adolescence, but an adequate understanding of the factors associated with early initiation remains elusive.

Methods: Sixth- to eighth-grade students (n = 4,263, 67.1% white, 23.5% black, 7.2% other) from seven middle schools were surveyed.

Results: The overall prevalence of recent smoking (past 30 days) of 10.4% was similar for boys and girls and by race, but increased from 3.7% in sixth to 17.8% in eighth grade. In multiple logistic regression analyses positive outcome expectations, high perceived prevalence, deviance acceptance, and trouble at school were independently associated with smoking for both boys and girls. Among boys, problem-behaving friends, peer pressure, authoritative parenting, and mother's education and among girls, self-control problems, knowledgeable parents, and grade were independently associated with smoking.

Conclusions: This is one of the few studies to report an independent association between smoking and outcome expectations, the first study to report an independent effect for peer influences among boys only, and one of several to find a negative association between smoking and positive parenting behavior. These findings suggest that the effectiveness of preventive interventions might be improved by targeting parent, school, and student outcomes, including outcome expectations, deviance acceptance, and social norms for both boys and girls, peer influences among boys, and self-control among girls.