Smoking Susceptibility and Smoking Behavior among Girls

In recent years, prevalence of smoking among women has been significantly increasing. The aim of this research was to examine the relationships of smoking susceptibility and smoking behavior, specifically in youth teenage girls, in order to have tools for smoking prevention among women. Three studies were conducted in successive years in public and private secondary schools of Mexico City; in total, 1.460 female adolescents participated in them. Psychometric scales were constructed and reconstructed to susceptibility, experimentation and smoking could be measured. In the latest versions of the scales were obtained explained variances > 59% and coefficients alpha > 0.82. Results showed high and significant coefficients of correlation between susceptibility to smoking and experimentation with tobacco (r = 0.743) as well as smoking (r = 0.424). According to the regression analysis, the susceptibility explained 28.9% of experimentation variance, and 22% of smoking variance, so it is a good predictor of smoking behavior among girls. It was concluded that smoking susceptibility is a measure that can be used reliably to evaluate smoking risk in adolescent women; in this way the prevention efforts will be properly focused on.