The relationship of Smoking Knowledge, Smoking Attitude and Stigma among Health-related College Students

Abstract

Active participation of health workers is essential for effective anti-smoking campaigns. This study was conducted to investigate the knowledge, attitude, and stigma level of smoking among health-related college students.This study is a descriptive research study to figure out the knowledge, attitudes, and stigma of smoking according to gender and grade of health care college students and the findings were verified from 143 health college students. SPSS25 was used to analyze the independent sample T-Test and one way ANOVA method, and Pearson coefficient correlation was used to see the correlation between variables.Smoking knowledge did not significantly affect smoking attitude and stigma, but there were differences in smoking knowledge scores in the lower and upper grades. Also, contrary to the hypothesis that the degree of stigma for smoking among female students is high, there was no difference in the degree of stigma perceived by female students and male students for smoking. However, people with high stigma for smoking appeared to have a negative attitude toward smoking. As such, men who smoked tended to take a more positive attitude toward smoking, and tended to be close to them, and there was no gender difference in the degree of stigma to accept smoking. Moreover, health care workers' stigma for smoking was found to be higher than that for general smoking.It is necessary to develop a framework for the research of smoking cessation based on the research result of this effect of stigma for smoking to negative smoking behavior.