Children’s Perceptions of Smokers and Nonsmokers
Keywords:
Children, social learning, smoking, perceptionAbstract
Objective: Initiation of smoking takes place in childhood. One of the factors contributing to this early start is taking adult smokers as their model in their social learning environment. Aim of this study is to determine how children perceive some characteristics of smokers and non-smokers.
Method: The participants were 373 volunteer children in this descriptive study. The gender distribution among children was 49.9% girls (n=186) 51.1% boys (n=187). The mean age of the subjects was 12.21 years (SD = 1.56, Maximum = 17, Minimum = 10). Checklist consisting of 29 items was used to assess perceptions of smokers and nonsmokers. In the analysis of the data percentage dispersion and Pearson chi-square analysis were used.
Results: Certain significant differences have been found between boys and girls in terms of their perceptions about smokers; 32% of the boys and 42% of the girls perceive the smokers as smart-elegant (x2 = 4.17, df = 2, p<.05), 25% of the boys and 34% of the girls perceive them as virtuous (x2= 3.71, df = 2, p<.05) and 63% of the boys and 48% of the girls perceive them as not submissive (x2= 9.16, df = 2, p<.05), 66% of the boys and 75% of the girls perceive the non-smokers as leaders (x2= 4.12, df = 2, p<.05), 58% of the boys and 68% of the girls perceive them as not submissive people (x2= 3.77, df = 2, p<.05).
Conclusion: Attributions related to smoking and taking adults as a models affect children’s smoking tendency in initiation phase. These results show that smoking prevention programs should be directed to very early ages.
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