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APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Xinguang Chen¹, Bonita Stanton¹, Xiaoming Li¹, Xiaolan Tang², and Hanwu Li². (1) Department of Pediatrics, Wayne State University, 4201 St. Antoine Street, UHC-6D, Detroit, MI 48201, 3137450564, jimchen@med.wayne.edu, (2) School of Public Health, Hainan Medical College, Haikou, China

Background: Great advances have been made in tobacco control with evidence from theoretical models and empirical data addressing factors that are explicitly related to smoking, such as the harmful effect from smoking, impact from pro-smoking media, skills to resist smoking. There is a lack of data on potentially influential factors that are not explicitly related to smoking.

Method: Survey data were collected from 344 (47% female) medical students 18 through 24 years old (mean age = 20.7 and SD = 1.0) in China. Values were assessed using the Rokeach Value Survey (unidimensional, alpha = 0.9); respondents who reported smoking on at least one day in the past 30 days were used to calculate smoking prevalence.

Results: 18.4% of the sample had smoked in the past 30 days. Bivariate analysis indicates that the 30-day smoking prevalence was negatively associated with the 18 terminal and the 18 instrumental values with a few exceptions (e.g., exciting life, cheerful life, and imaginative). Logistic regression indicates that 5% (OR = 0.95, 95% CI: 0.91, 0.99, p<.05) and 4% (OR = 0.96, 95% CI: 0.92, 0.99, p<.05) declines in the 30-day smoking prevalence were associated with one point increase in terminal values and instrumental values respectively. When the value scores increased from the lowest to the highest, smoking prevalence declined from 75% to 14%.

Conclusion: Values that promote individual development and societal harmony are negatively associated with tobacco use, supporting the addition of value education, a general and smoking-implicit component, to enhance tobacco use prevention.

Learning Objectives: Information from this study will

• Help tobacco prevention researchers to conceive new prevention strategies that incoporate general value education as an intervention component to enhance tobacco use prevention, and 2)Stimulate more research on factors live values that are not explicitly related to smoking but show protective effect in reducing risk of tobacco use.

Keywords: Smoking, Risk Factors

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Not Answered