Smoking Behavior among youth in the Deep South of Thailand

บทคัดย่อ

The objective of this research was to study the smoking behavior among youth in a deep southern border province. The population of this survey were 1,613 males youth aged 19-24 years who lived and were listed on the household registration of 13 villages of Sateng Nok Subdistrict of Mueang Yala, Yala Province. A stratified sampling technique for 13 village as strata was employed to take 346 youths, according to the Krejcie & Morgan table. The questionnaire about smoking behavior was adapted from the nicotine addiction assessment with the Index of Item – Objective Congruence (IOC) of 0.92. The statistics used in data analysis were mean, percentage, standard deviation, median, maximum and minimum. Out of 346 samples, 66.5 % were smokers, started smoking at 10 years old. For smokers, 58.3% smoking 1-9 cigarettes/day, 53.9% smoking while in stress or anxiety, 68.8% smoking at 5 minutes after getting up in the morning, and 51.7% smoking even during hospitalization. In addition, by nicotine addiction level, 86.5 % were non-addict, followed by 10.5%, a very high trend of developing nicotine addiction, and 3.0% moderately addicted to nicotine. From the research, the youth’s smoking problem is important and need to be solved immediately especially the youth who have hazard level of nicotine addiction must be consulted by a physician for quitting smoking.