Investigating students' attitude and performance of smoking at Hormozgan University of Medical Sciences in 2015

Background and purpose of the study: Willingness to smoke and the negative consequences of smoking are among the main problems in general health all around the world. Therefore, the present research attempted to investigate students' perception and performance of smoking cigarettes at Hormozgan University of Medical Sciences. Materials and methods: The present research is analytical and cross-sectional. The target population included all students at Hormozgan University of Medical Sciences in 2015. The sample size was 350. Students admitted in the same academic year were clustered based on their field of study and were selected in a systematic randomization method. To assess students' attitude towards smoking, Shore et al.' s Smoking Attitudes Scale was used. In order to measure their performance, Romito et al.' s Performance Evaluation Questionnaire was employed. The reliability and validity of both scales were already established. The collected data entered SPSS version 16 and the indices of central tendency, descriptive statistics and such statistical tests as independent-sample t-test, one-way ANOVA and chi-squared test were used to analyze the data. The significance level of results was set at <=. 05. Findings: participants' average age was 22.77+ 3.64 years. The mean score of attitude towards smoking was 50.80+ 9.87. A statistically significant difference was found between male and female students' attitude towards smoking ( p<.05). Similarly, a similar statistically significant difference was found between the attitudes of smokers and non-smokers ( p<.05). The former had a higher attitude score on average towards the act of smoking than the latter. Due to the debilitative effects of smoking, there is a need for extensive interventions to prevent the formation of a positive attitude towards smoking among university students and prevent the emergence of smoking behaviors among them.