NCJ Number
221376
Journal
Journal of Child & Adolescent Substance Abuse Volume: 17 Issue: 1 Dated: 2007 Pages: 1-28
Date Published
2007
Length
28 pages
Annotation
This study assessed adolescent girls' perceptions of smoking risk and protective factors.
Abstract
Items with the highest levels of agreement as risk factors were emotionally based e.g., "feels stressed out a lot of the time" (97.2 percent), "feels depressed a lot of the time" (96.3 percent), "feels angry a lot of the time" (95.4 percent), and "feels hopeless a lot of the time" (94.4 percent). Twenty-seven items were judged to be protective factors. The level of agreement for these factors was significantly higher than for the risk factors (mean of 92.6 percent), with 22 items having over 90-percent agreement. Four items were rated as protective factors by all but one girl per item: "Can talk with mom or dad about problems," "participates in sports," "wants good grades in school," and "wants to go to college." The girls were distinguished by four sociodemographic variables: public or private school, non-White or White, 12-14 years old or 15-16 years old, and resides in an urban or suburban area. They were also distinguished by two behavioral factors: having a friend who smokes and had tried smoking. One variable (resides in an urban or suburban area) was not associated with any of the risk or protective factors. The findings suggest that an effective antismoking campaign would promote an overall "healthy girl" image that is linked to physical, emotional, and social well-being. Such a campaign could also be linked with other health behaviors in girls, reinforcing that their health and well-being across domains and behaviors is important to society. Using a "snowball" technique, indepth interviews were conducted with 108 girls from 7 demographically dissimilar social networks. They were asked to classify 58 items as either a risk or protective factor for smoking initiation, with an importance weighting assigned to each. 7 tables and 54 references