Teacher Influence Among Adolescent Cigarette Smoking
Tobacco use among adolescents continues to be a problem in the United States (Noland & Kroll, 1996; Grunbaum et al., 2004; Johnston, et al., 2004; American Academy of Pediatrics, 2001; Wang et al., 1998). Adolescence is a period of time during which making healthy choices for optimal health can affect current and future health status. If adolescents continue to engage in unhealthy behaviors that place them at-risk for serious health complications, the public health is compromised as a result. This exploratory study found that perceived acceptability of starting to smoke among one's teachers (proximal norm) was a predictor of intention to initiate smoking cigarettes. In addition, for every one unit of change in perceived acceptability of starting to smoke among one's teachers, there was a 50% increase in the odds that a student intended to start smoking in the next six months. The instrument used for this study was that employed by the Substance Abuse Monitoring Survey (SAMS) (Olds & Thombs, 2004). This convenience sample consisted of 6,595 students enrolled in 9 northeast Ohio school districts. The data were collected in the academic years 1999-2000 to 2003-2004. Logistic regression analysis was utilized to analyze the data. At the time of this study (2005), this finding has not been documented in previous related research. It is believed this was the first study to assess perceived acceptability of starting to smoke among one's teachers was a significant predictor of that behavior. Results from this study suggest that a much more robust strategy for providing normative education would focus on delivering feedback about proximal norms. In addition, a critical issue for delivering normative education in schools seems to be teacher training. The findings from this study suggest that teachers could be effective in establishing conservative normative beliefs. This finding provides a basis for school-based prevention programs that deliver an approach more straightforward and genuine by teachers for informing adolescents that smoking cigarettes is an unacceptable behavior. Additional research is needed to confirm this association between perceived acceptability of initiating cigarette smoking among one's teachers and the intention to start smoking.