Adolescent Abuse and Smoking Behavior Among High School Students in the Republic of Korea

摘要

Despite the existence of ample evidence on long-term effects of early abuse experiences on smoking in adulthood, not much is known about smoking risk among abused adolescents in the current literature. Thus, we aimed to investigate the relationship of adolescent abuse with experimental and daily smoking among Korean adolescents. For our study, we analyzed nationally representative secondary data obtained from eleventh-grade students in 2014 (N=2052). In order to obtain more accurate findings, we conducted survey data analysis by incorporating a complex sampling design into the entire data analysis process. We used descriptive statistics to investigate smoking-related characteristics; we conducted multinomial logistic regression analysis after adjusting for 10 control factors in order to investigate the association between the two conditions. In our study, approximately 9% of the students self-reported cigarette use during the past year, and about 78% of past-year cigarette users smoked a cigarette almost every day. In addition, we found a significant relationship of adolescent abuse with greater risk of both experimental and daily smoking. Specifically, the predicted odds of experimental smoking and daily smoking increased by approximately 77-85% with a one-unit increase in a perceived level of adolescent abuse. In addition, we found that six control factors were statistically significant: gender, perceived academic achievement, friends who smoke, relationships with friends, relationships with teachers, and participation in a volunteering service. Given our finding, more attention should be paid to adolescent abuse in developing strategies to prevent or reduce cigarette use in adolescence.