Understanding and preventing college smoking
Creators: name: University Of California Office Of The President
Publisher: name: University of California Office of the President
publisherIdentifier: https://ror.org/00dmfq477
publisherIdentifierScheme: ROR
Year: 2024

description: Across the nation, the percentage of college students who smoke is on the rise. This increase has been found in both private and public institutions, in two year and four year colleges and universities, religious and secular institutions, small and large institutions, and urban and rural institutions. It is not limited to one gender or cultural group. College smoking is on the rise across the board. The increase in college smoking over the past 10 years is so substantial that this has been termed a 'cause for national concern'. Tobacco use now poses a major health risk to American college students. First-time college students are in a new environment, often away from their families for the first time. While there is more freedom, there are also many more demands made upon college students to make their own lifestyle decisions without parental supervision or input. There are many opportunities to experiment with risky behaviors such smoking. We know that the health behaviors of college students are important because it is a time when behaviors are changed, modified, or consolidated into lifetime patterns. We also know that college smokers often remain smokers throughout life. In order to prevent the uptake and consolidation of an addiction that carries over into adulthood, there is an urgent need to mount effective smoking prevention campaigns at the college level. 
 
 
 
 
 
 While there is a great need for good prevention programs on college campuses, there is little precedent for prevention of smoking on college campuses. There have not been many state-of-the-art prevention programs launched on college campuses, and those that have been undertaken have not been able to prevent smoking successfully. Perhaps this is due to the fact that so little is known about why college students are taking up smoking. Research has shown that anti-smoking campaigns are most effective when they are based on a solid knowledge of what motivates the population in question to smoke. This means that we need to develop a knowledge base on why college students are smoking before we can begin to intervene. One of the issues that must be taken into account in studying this population is the growing cultural diversity of our college campuses. Cultural as well as gender differences in smoking habits have been repeatedly found. This suggests that different groups of people might have different reasons for smoking. The research proposed here will study why different groups of college students smoke, in order to mount smoking prevention efforts on college campuses that will successfully prevent smoking in the future. 
 
 
 
 
 
 Moving from high school into college entails a whole constellation of potentially stressful experiences, including first-time independent personal care, increased academic pressures, and making new friends in a new environment. This transition often goes hand-in-hand with temporary dips in self-esteem. Both stress and lowered self-esteem are related to smoking. These factors may be especially prescient for cultural groups where the influence of the family and elders is strong and who had been protected by cultural and family influences before the move to college. We have also found that smoking might take on meanings or functions that motivate people to start or stay smoking. For instance, people tend to use smoking as a form of weight control, as a way to manage stress, or as a way to try to fit in with friends or groups of people who smoke. We think that stress, self-esteem issues, and these psychological functions that smoking fulfills combine to motivate people to smoke. We also expect that the way that perceived stress, self-esteem, and psychological functions of behavior influence smoking will differ between cultural groups and between women and men.
 
 
 
 
 
 A private four-year university, a public four-year university, and a community college will participate in the proposed study. Interviews will be conducted with students from three cultural groups: Caucasian, Mexican (American), and Chinese students, reflecting three of the major cultural groups in California. The interviews will help us to understand smoking behavior in these groups. Three large-scale surveys will be undertaken on each campus in order to gather data to enable us to test our hypotheses.
 
 
 
 
 
 The research proposed here is very timely. We are specifically interested in understanding and comparing the unique factors and forces that shape the cigarette consumption of Asian-American and Pacific Islanders and Mexican-Americans, as well as the role that acculturation and gender play in college smoking uptake in these groups. The research proposed here will contribute to our ability to provide much needed effective tobacco intervention programs to our culturally diverse college campuses.