Abstract
Family support has a beneficial impact on protecting health-risk behaviour in adolescents. This study aimed to explore whether family support is associated with risk of smoking during transition from early (11 years) to late (15 years) adolescence across 42 countries. The data from the cross-national Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) study in 2017/2018 were employed (N = 195,966). Family support was measured using the four-item Family dimension of the Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support (sum score 20 or more was categorised as high family support). Smoking was defined as a reported cigarette smoking at least 1–2 days in the last 30 days. The association between smoking and family support was assessed using a prevalence ratio (PR) obtained from the multivariate Poisson regression. Over two thirds of adolescents reported high levels of support from their family. Family support was found to significantly decrease with age in most of the countries, with the boys reported high level of family support more often than girls. The adolescents who reported having low family support also were more likely to smoke compared to their peers who reported having high family support (PR = 1.81; 95% CI: 1.71–1.91 in boys, and PR = 2.19; 95% CI: 2.08–2.31 in girls). The countries with a stronger effect of family support in reducing smoking risk indicated lower rates of adolescent smoking as well as lower increases in the cigarette smoking prevalence during the age period from 11 to 15 years. This study reinforces the need for family support, which is an important asset helping adolescents to overcome the risk of smoking during their transition from early to late adolescence.
Highlights
Adolescence is marked as a period of rapid developmental changes and often perceived as a time of changing behaviour and health across the life course [1,2]
The findings indicate that family support during adolescence exerts a persistent influence on diminishing risk of adolescent smoking
The results imply that the agerelated increase in smoking prevalence during adolescence is less pronounced in countries where family support can be regarded as a stronger protective factor against smoking than in countries where its effect is weaker
Summary
Adolescence is marked as a period of rapid developmental changes and often perceived as a time of changing behaviour and health across the life course [1,2]. As a transition from the childhood to adulthood, adolescence is a time of opportunity and vulnerability to health risk behaviour with lifelong consequences for health and well-being [3,4]. During this period smoking is most commonly initiated and addiction is likely to happen [5].
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