IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/hepoli/v95y2010i1p36-40.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

What prevents young adolescents from smoking? Self-reported motives of 12-15-year-old non-smokers

Author

Listed:
  • Schneider, Sven
  • Loeber, Sabine
  • Janßen, Maria
  • Roehrig, Silke
  • Solle, Denise

Abstract

Objectives This study investigated the real motives of German non-smokers.Methods In the German SToP ("Sources of Tobacco for Pupils") Study 707 non-smoking pupils were asked to write down their motives for being non-smokers. A total of 1324 partially very elaborate free text statements (mean/range: 1.9/1-7 distinguishable motives) were evaluated in a qualitative content analysis.Results The most important and frequently mentioned motives for not smoking were health-related arguments (78.1%). Except for cancer significant main health risks of tobacco consumption like cardio- and cerebrovascular diseases or COPD were hardly perceived. Further important reasons were an aesthetic aversion (38.6%), missing perception of a benefit (25.2%), and economic motives (20.8%). Girls and pupils from academic high schools named aesthetic motives significantly more often than boys and pupils from secondary schools respectively. A historical comparison shows that the motive "lacking benefit" reached a higher rank in our study than in the 1990s.Conclusions When non-smokers are asked directly, extrinsic reasons (restrictions, smoking bans) do not seem to be relevant for them. Reasons concerning health, good physical shape, and beauty should be a central argument in the medical practise with young smokers.

Suggested Citation

  • Schneider, Sven & Loeber, Sabine & Janßen, Maria & Roehrig, Silke & Solle, Denise, 2010. "What prevents young adolescents from smoking? Self-reported motives of 12-15-year-old non-smokers," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 95(1), pages 36-40, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:hepoli:v:95:y:2010:i:1:p:36-40
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168-8510(09)00285-1
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Sven Schneider & Sigrid Mohnen & Svenja Pust, 2008. "The average age of smoking onset in Germany – trends and correlates," International Journal of Public Health, Springer;Swiss School of Public Health (SSPH+), vol. 53(3), pages 160-164, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Sukaina Alzyoud & Khalid A. Kheirallah & Linda S. Weglicki & Kenneth D. Ward & Abdallah Al-Khawaldeh & Ali Shotar, 2014. "Tobacco Smoking Status and Perception of Health among a Sample of Jordanian Students," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 11(7), pages 1-14, July.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Timo-Kolja Pförtner & Bart Clercq & Michela Lenzi & Alessio Vieno & Katharina Rathmann & Irene Moor & Anne Hublet & Michal Molcho & Anton Kunst & Matthias Richter, 2015. "Does the association between different dimension of social capital and adolescent smoking vary by socioeconomic status? a pooled cross-national analysis," International Journal of Public Health, Springer;Swiss School of Public Health (SSPH+), vol. 60(8), pages 901-910, December.
    2. Tamara Schikowski & Nino Künzli, 2009. "A little bit is not good enough: comprehensive smoking control is needed," International Journal of Public Health, Springer;Swiss School of Public Health (SSPH+), vol. 54(6), pages 365-366, December.
    3. Tibor Baška & Charles Warren & Martina Bašková & Nathan Jones, 2009. "Prevalence of youth cigarette smoking and selected social factors in 25 European countries: findings from the Global Youth Tobacco Survey," International Journal of Public Health, Springer;Swiss School of Public Health (SSPH+), vol. 54(6), pages 439-445, December.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:hepoli:v:95:y:2010:i:1:p:36-40. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu or the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/healthpol .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.