The tobacco smoking among rural adolescents
The article presents results of study of prevalence of tobacco smoking among school adolescents carried out in rural comprehensive schools of the Kaliningrad oblast obtained within the framework of large-scale study (monitoring) of using psychoactive substances by rural school adolescents aged 15-17 years in 2016-2017 in Russia. The technique of multistage sampling was applied to select contingents of adolescents. The sampling included 1085 adolescents, including 531 boys and 554 girls.The analysis demonstrated that prevalence of tobacco smoking among rural adolescents in the Kaliningrad oblast made up to 16.8 among boys and 9.2 among girls per 100 adolescents of corresponding gender and age. Every day smoked 15.8 boys and 8.3 girls out of 100 adolescents aged 15-17 years. In comparison with data of 2013, the indicator of everyday smoking decreased on 37% among boys and on 62% among girls. Never tried to smoke 57.4% of boys and 67.5% of girls aged 15-17 years. Among those who tried continued to smoke 39.9% of boys and 28.3% of girls.The main motives of tobacco smoking are “motives of dependence”. These motives were more often mentioned by boys (p<0,05).The girls in 4.3 times more often than boys smoke tobacco “for company” (p<0,05). The factors effecting “development” and “non-development” of tobacco smoking were established. Also, certain indices characterizing family of adolescent, sources of information about tobacco smoking, academic performance, spending free time and attitude of friends to tobacco smoking were analyzed. The results demonstrated that in hierarchy of factors promoting development of tobacco smoking in adolescent age first place if taken by influence of tobacco smoking friends, conditioned by psychological characteristics of adolescent age.The tobacco smoking adolescents have rather high 74%) awareness about harm of smoking. Since this information is acquired by them from separated and very often incidental sources it does not avert them from tobacco smoking.