Assessing Undergraduates’ Perception of Risks Related to Body Art in Italy: The SUPeRBA Multicenter Cross-Sectional Study

Abstract

Tattooing and piercing may lead to health complications. The present multicenter cross-sectional study aimed to assess awareness and knowledge of health risks related to body art and to identify their possible determinants among a large sample of undergraduates in Italy. A web-based questionnaire collecting information on socio-demographic characteristics, awareness, knowledge, and some potential predictors was administered to undergraduates attending twelve Italian universities. The level of knowledge was expressed as the number of correct answers (0–11 for tattooing, 0–14 for piercing). A total of 2985 participants (mean age 23.15 ± 3.99, 73.9% F) participated in the study. Although 95.4% of the respondents were aware of possible health consequences of body art, a low level of specific knowledge was registered for both tattooing (mean number of correct answers 5.38 ± 2.39) and piercing (5.93 ± 3.12) consequences. Lower knowledge was associated with the attendance of non-life science course and with lower duration of academic education for both tattoo and piercing. Lower knowledge of tattooing risks was related with commuter status, while lower knowledge of piercing risks was associated with lower father’s education. These findings highlight the need to enhance information campaigns targeted to youths to increase their awareness of possible health risk of body art.

What about Your Body Ornament? Experiences of Tattoo and Piercing among Italian Youths

“…With regard to the choice of the operator, in the logistic regression analysis, addressing themselves to professional piercers was found to be more common among students from northern or central Italy, which is in line with the better knowledge of piercing risks shown by these student populations in our previous survey [22].…”

“…A cross-sectional study named “Study on Undergraduate Perception of Risks of Body Art” (SUPeRBA) was performed between April 2020 and January 2021 for evaluating the knowledge and the awareness of health risks associated to body arts. For this purpose, a web-based questionnaire was administered to a large sample of undergraduate students from twelve selected public Italian universities [ 22 ]. The present study was carried out considering just the subpopulation of participants who had at least one tattoo or one piercing to trace a picture of this community and to study in depth some features of body art practices.…”

“…With a total population of about 500,000 undergraduate students attending the participant universities, a sample size of at least 246 tattooed and 323 pierced students were reached, with a prevalence of about 20% and 30% of tattooing and piercing, respectively, among university students in Italy [ 22 ], and a confidence interval of 95%.…”