The Perception of Smoking Cessation among the Students in Northern University of Thailand

Abstract

A cross-sectional descriptive study aims to the perception of smoking cessation, smoking cessation policy, smoking knowledge and the factors related to smoking cessation among students in the university. The data was collected using questionnaires. The sample in this study was 369 students in the Upper Northern University who smoke. The study found that, the sample group is male (74.30%), aged 22 years or more (30.90%), studying fourth-year student (46.10 %), less income 2,000 baht/month (88.90%), live in university dormitory (93.70%), personal disease (19.80%), smoking (56.40%), smoking 1-5 cigarettes/day (84.30%), perception of harm/danger of cigarettes (95.4%) and policy to quit smoking in schools (97.80%). The knowledge and attitudes of smoking cessation among the students have high level of knowledge and attitudes (74.50 and 50.40%). In the part of perception, there was low level of smoking (59.30%), the support police in university is moderate level (76.40%), the low level of smoking cessation behaviors (64.80%). The significantly factors related to smoking cessation are gender, age, place, personal disease, smoking, the knowledge and attitude of quitting smoking, perception of smoking cessation and smoking cessation policy. These are the factor correlated with smoking cessation behavior of students with statistical significance (p-value = .05).

The results of the study indicate that, there should be supported to increase awareness about smoking cessation, Enforcing measures to strict accordance with the regulations of quit smoking. As well as changing behavior of students who smoke to stop smoking.