Is there a relation between school smoking policies and youth cigarette smoking knowledge and behaviors?

To comply with workplace legislation, New Zealand schools are required to have policies regarding tobacco smoking. Many schools also have policies to prevent tobacco use by students, including education programmes, cessation support and punishment for students found smoking. This paper investigated...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Health education research 2006-02, Vol.21 (1), p.108-115
Main Authors: Darling, Helen, Reeder, Anthony I., Williams, Sheila, McGee, Rob
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adolescent
Adolescents
Correlation
Data Collection
Educational Environment
Female
Foreign Countries
Health Behavior
Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice
Health technology assessment
Humans
Incidence
Influences
Intervention
Knowledge Level
Male
New Zealand
Organizational Policy
ORIGINAL ARTICLES
Physical Education
Policy
Prevention
Preventive programmes
Punishment
Purchasing
Rules
School Policy
Schools
Secondary School Students
Secondary School Teachers
Secondary schools
Smoking
Smoking - legislation & jurisprudence
Students - psychology
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Summary:To comply with workplace legislation, New Zealand schools are required to have policies regarding tobacco smoking. Many schools also have policies to prevent tobacco use by students, including education programmes, cessation support and punishment for students found smoking. This paper investigated the associations between school policies and the prevalence of students' cigarette smoking. Furthermore, we investigated the association between school policy and students' tobacco purchasing behavior, knowledge of health effects from tobacco use and likelihood of influencing others not to smoke. Data were obtained from a self-report survey administered to 2658 New Zealand secondary school students and staff from 63 schools selected using a multi-stage sampling procedure. Components of school policy were not significantly associated with smoking outcomes, health knowledge or health behavior, and weakly related to a punishment emphasis and students advising others to not smoke. Similarly, weak associations were found between not advising others to not smoke and policies with a punishment emphasis as well as smoke-free environments. The results suggest that having a school tobacco policy was unrelated to the prevalence of tobacco use among students, tobacco purchasing behavior and knowledge of the negative health effects of tobacco.
ISSN:0268-1153
1465-3648
DOI:10.1093/her/cyh047