Effectiveness of Antismoking Media Messages and Education Among Adolescents in Malaysia and Thailand: Findings From the International Tobacco Control Southeast Asia Project

Abstract

Introduction: Finding ways to discourage adolescents from taking up smoking is important because those who begin smok ing at an earlier age are more likely to become addicted and have greater difficulty in quitting. This article examined whether anti smoking messages and education could help to reduce smoking susceptibility among adolescents in two Southeast Asian coun tries and to explore the possible moderating effect of country and gender.

Psychological Problems and Psychosocial Predictors of Cigarette Smoking Behavior among Undergraduate Students in Malaysia

“…Though the result of the study did not show significant difference on gender, but the mean value of the female smokers was higher compared to male. This is supported by previous study that anti-smoking education is necessary at schools to reduce susceptibility of female adolescent smokers in Malaysian (Zawahir et al, 2013). One of the reasonsfor higher mean values of female smokers dueto the researcher who collected data is a female and that attributed female smokers to admit that they are smokers.…”

“…Coumaravelou Saravanan*, Imran Heidhy smoking reduces their psychological distress than nonsmokers in Malaysia (Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 2012;Zawahir et al, 2013). Hence, there is a need to study the prevalence and precipitation factor of cigarette smoking among students in Malaysia.…”

“…The prevalence of smoking was higher among male (41.2%) than female (17.5%) in one of the private university in Malaysia (Al-Naggar et al, 2013). There may be many female smokers as like male in Asian counties, but female smokers from Asian countries are reluctant to admit to the researchers that they are smokers (Zawahir et al, 2013). Whether previous researchers had approached the female students while they were smoking cigarettes by female researcher to participate in their study is questionable.…”

Work Related Neck Pain and Its Associated Factors among Registered Female Nurses Who Are Computer Users in Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia Medical Centre

“…The objectives of studying the smoking in present study were to corroborate efficiency and effectiveness of anti-smoking educating messages on smoking harmful health effects that have provided by the nurses, doctors and teaching staff 44 and to highlight awareness and perception of Malaysians about health risks of smoking. Malaysia like other Islamic countries, the smoking among females 1.6% could be considered as social stigma comparing with the males 46.4% according to WHO 2011 report on the global tobacco epidemic; therefore there was an insignificant association between neck pain and smoking as it was already expected.…”

“…In bivariate; Chi square analysis, the result of present study indicated that there were seven factors significantly associated with neck pain i.e. age, BMI, physical exercises, night shifts, neck bending, prolonged working hours on computer and personnel shortage.Further analysis, by using multiple logistic regression showed that age groups [30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39]) and [40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49] physical exercises (p= 0.025,, working time on computer (p= 0.029, night shifts (p= 0.001, personnel shortage (p= 0.005, and neck bending (p= 0.013, …”