Abstract
Turkey protects its entire population of 75 million people with all the MPOWER measures at the highest level. The aim of this study is to make a comparison of smoking and addiction data obtained from Sakarya University students in 2005-6 and 2012-13. A total of 4,200 (2,500 and 1,700 for each academic year) students at Sakarya University in Sakarya, Turkey, were randomly selected for sampling purposes. The selected participants represented Sakarya University students. Data were collected using a pretested anonymous and confidential, self-completed questionnaire which took 15-20 minutes to complete and Fagerstrom Test for nicotine dependence. Chi-squared, Spearman correlation, and binary logistic regression tests were used to define associations, if any. The level of significance was kept at alpha=0.05. Smoking prevalence dropped by 8.5% (from 26.9% to 18.5%). Male gender, older age, high family smoking index, low self-rated school success, and high peer smoker proportion were common variables that have correlation with smoking status. In the binary logistic regression test the highest contributor to "being a smoker" was found to be the rate of peer smokers. Having all friends smoking puts the student a a 47.5 and 58.0 times higher risk for smoking for males and females, respectively. Our results suggest an admirable diminution of smoking prevalence among Sakarya University students, which can be attributed to MPOWER protection.
Highlights
The five leading global risks for mortality in the world are high blood pressure, tobacco use, high blood glucose, physical inactivity, and overweight-obesity
Our results suggest an admirable diminution of smoking prevalance among Sakarya University students, which can be attributed to MPOWER protection
The results reveal that peer smoking has a positive effect on student smoking: to have all peers smoking is found to increase the probability of student smoking by 58.02 times (95%confidence interval (CI)= 16.15 to 208.45)
Summary
The five leading global risks for mortality in the world are high blood pressure, tobacco use, high blood glucose, physical inactivity, and overweight-obesity. These are responsible for raising the risk of chronic diseases, such as heart disease and cancers and affect countries across all income groups. The prevalence of regular tobacco smoking (the main component of tobacco use) in the European Region of the World Health Organization (WHO) among the population aged 15 years and over has reached 27% on average according to the data reported from 37 countries around 2008 (World Health Organization, 2013).
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary 
Published Version (
Free)
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call