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Monday, 31 October 2011
Learning Objective 1: Describe the smoking opinions and patterns of undergraduate college students.
Learning Objective 2: Evaluate young adult college students' perceptions of smoking policies on a college campus.
College years are crucial for young adults in the establishment of life-style behaviors that can have a lifetime effect (Staten & Ridner, 2006). The purpose of this project was to assess undergraduate college students’ opinions of smoking policies, secondhand smoke exposure, and smoking in public places within a smoke-free campus. The Transtheoretical Model (Prochaska & DiClemente, 1983) provided the behavioral change framework. An on-line cross-sectional survey was used to collect data. Surveys were emailed via Zoomerang to all undergraduate students at a private, Midwestern university. Survey questions contained 57 forced-choice or open-ended options. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics. Forty percent (n = 1,093) of those surveyed responded: 23% were freshmen, 23% sophomores, 24% juniors, 28% seniors, and 2% others. Subjects were female (61%), white (91%), a member of a social fraternity or sorority (30%), an NCAA athlete (7%), and lived in a resident hall (60%). Forty-three percent of the respondents were exposed to secondhand smoke in their environments. Fifty-five percent were unaware that the campus is a smoke-free environment, 96% have seen smoking on campus, and 71% believed the smoke-free policy is not enforced. Sixty-seven percent of the respondents agreed or strongly agreed that the campus should be a smoke-free environment. Thirty-eight percent (n = 415) of respondents admitted to smoking at some point in their lifetime. Twenty-eight percent (n = 308) indicated they smoked during the previous 30 days, but only 108 of these smokers identified themselves as a “current” smoker. Findings indicated that the rate of smoking was similar to national college data. The majority supported a smoke-free environment and believed the current campus policy was not enforced. Data from this study adds to the growing body of evidence about college students’ opinions concerning smoking and forms a foundation for an evidence-based project on smoking abstinence.