Smoking among Saudi university students: consumption patterns and risk factors.

Mandil, A.; BinSaeed, A.; Dabbagh, R.; Shaikh, S. A.; AlSaadi, M.; Khan, M.

Tobacco use is increasing among young people, especially in Gulf nations such as Saudi Arabia. The objectives of this study were to estimate the prevalence and behavioural patterns of tobacco use among undergraduate students at King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia during the academic year 2008/09 and investigate factors that influenced their tobacco use. A cross-sectional study was done of a representative sample (n = 6793) of the undergraduate student population using a modified version of the global youth tobacco survey questionnaire. The prevalence of smoking was 14.5% among students, 22.2% and 2.2% among fathers and mothers and 43.1% and 14.8% for male and female siblings; 15.0% reported all or most of their friends smoked. The most important independent predictors of smoking were: friends' smoking (some: OR = 6.7 and all: OR = 54.9), sister's smoking (OR = 2.2), mother's smoking (OR = 2.1), single status (OR = 1.7) and age (OR = 1.18).

SAUDI Arabia; SMOKING & psychology; ANALYSIS of variance; CHI-squared test; COMPUTER software; CONFIDENCE intervals; EPIDEMIOLOGY; HEALTH behavior; MULTIVARIATE analysis; REGRESSION analysis; SMOKING; STATISTICS; T-test (Statistics); DATA analysis; DISEASE prevalence; PSYCHOLOGY of Undergraduates; CROSS-sectional method

Eastern Mediterranean Health Journal, 2011, Vol 17, Issue 4, p309

1020-3397

Academic Journal

10.26719/2011.17.4.309