A Study on Nicotine Dependency Levels of Smoking University Students Depending On Socio-Demographic Features, and Smoking Habits

摘要

Smoking is a common addictive behavior found among young people particularly university students. In the case of smoking addiction the substance nicotine has the most important influence. Therefore, in the fight against smoking addiction it is considered to be important to know the smoking habits of university students and the factors that might affect these students’ nicotine addiction. In this regard, in this study it is aimed to investigate the nicotine addiction levels of smoking university students depending on their socio-demographic features and smoking habits. 460 smoking students enrolled in a public university in Turkey in the academic year of 2015-2016 participated in this study. The data were collected via personal information forms and Fagerstron Nicotine Addiction Scale. T-test for independent groups and one-way variance analysis were used in the analysis of the data. The results of the analysis revealed that nicotine addiction scores of cigar smoking university students did not differentiate significantly depending on the gender, faculty, grade level, place of residency, income, parents’ level of education, smoking state of mother, father, sibling, friend and the reason of beginning to smoke. Moreover, it was found that students older than 24 had higher scores of nicotine addiction compared to students aging around 18-20 and 21-23 respectively. Additionally, students beginning to smoke at the age range of 10-13 have had higher scores of nicotine addiction compared to students beginning to smoke at the age ranges of 14-17 and 18-21. Also, students smoking for 1-3 years have had lower scores of nicotine addiction compared to students smoking at the ranges of 4-6 years, 7-9 years, and more than 10 years of consuming. Besides, students smoking between the range of 1-10 cigars per day have had lower scores of nicotine addiction compared to student groups using 11-20, 21-30, and more than 31 respectively. The results of this study may provide insights for academicians and shed light to the studies discussing preventive works on addiction.