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Pressured Teens More Likely To Smoke
A University of Chicago study determined that teens who attend highly competitive schools with high academic expectations are more likely to smoke cigarettes than less-pressured adolescents, UPI reported in March 2001.
“Our study supports previous research by showing that an adolescent’s parents and peer group strongly influence whether or not the adolescent becomes a cigarette smoker, but we also found that schools can make a difference,” said Robert A. Johnson, a senior researcher at the university’s National Opinion Research Center.
The study examined national data on more than 16,000 eighth-grade students and 13,000 10th-graders from the late 1980’s, and follow-up surveys and interviews conducted through 1994.
The research showed that stress stemming from high academic expectations plays a key role in when teens decide to smoke, especially among girls. The study found that students at highly competitive schools were more likely to smoke than students with similar levels of academic performance at less-competitive schools.
“We think that students who are perceived as failing academically competitive schools experience more intense frustration and greater loss of social stature than otherwise similar adolescents because those schools place such great emphasis upon academic achievement,” Johnson said. “It is the frustration and loss of social status associated with failing to meet the school’s standards, more than anything else, that explain why adolescents at competitive schools take up cigarette smoking.”
The study further found that black teens are less likely to start smoking than whites, Hispanics, or Asians.
“Troubled white adolescents often take up cigarette smoking to express their opposition to individuals or institutions that have rejected them, or which, in their view, have treated them unfairly,” said Johnson.
The study’s findings are published in the March 2001 issue of the Journal of Health and Social Behavior.
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