Abstract:

Objective To investigate the social identity of smoking-attempting behavior among female high school students in Shanghai. Methods A questionnaire survey was conducted among 6 535 female high school students (aged 12 to 18 years) selected from 29 full-time high schools in Shanghai through stratified random cluster sampling, which was concerned with demographic characteristics, attitude and behavior towards tobacco use, school education on tobacco control and environment of society and family. The social identity of smoking-attempting behavior was analysed by Logistic regression analysis. Results Though 95.9% of the female high school students who attempted to smoke were aware that smoking was bad for health, 11.4% and 8.7% of them thought smoking made male or female students more attractive. In terms of their attitude towards peer smoking, the percentages of “doesn´t matter” and “support” were 46.2% and 2.9% respectively. Regarding the reasons for smoking, those who attempted to smoke thought internal influences accounted for 55.5% and environmental influences for 31.2%, while non-smokers thought internal influences accounted for 61.5% and environmental influences for 24.8%. Conclusion Those who attempt to smoke have an obviously positive orientation towards the social identity of the smoking population, taking resistance identity to resist the pressure of the smoking "stigma".

Key words: female high school students, smoking-attempting, social identity