Media literacy and cigarette smoking in Hungarian adolescents

Abstract

Objective: To assess smoking media literacy in a sample of Hungarian youth and to determine its association with current smoking and susceptibility to future smoking. Design: Quantitative cross-sectional survey. Setting: Four elementary and four high schools in Mako, Hungary. Method: A survey form was administered in regularly-scheduled classes to 546 eighth- and twelfth-grade students that included the smoking media literacy (SML) scale and items assessing cigarette use. Logistic regression was used to examine the relationship of smoking media literacy with current smoking, and also separately for susceptibility to smoking in the future, as dependent dichotomous variables. Results: Smoking media literacy was lower among the Hungarian adolescents than what has been previously reported in American adolescents. Multivariate logistic regression analysis results showed smoking media literacy to be associated with reduced risk of current smoking status at a similar level to that found in American adolescents. However, unlike previous research in American adolescents, smoking media literacy and susceptibility to future smoking was not associated. Reduced smoking may be most associated with the representation-reality domain of media literacy, which relates recognition of what is portrayed in the media with reality. Conclusion: Based on this study’s findings, prevention and health promotion planners in Hungary should consider media literacy training as a possible addition to smoking prevention efforts in community- and school-based efforts.

Evidence of the Value of the Smoking Media Literacy Framework for Middle School Students

“…In response to RQ1, the mean score on the SML scale across all respondents was 6.81 (SD = 1.61). This is similar to the mean of Primack et al's American high school sample (M = 6.9, SD = 1.3), and like that one, higher than the mean SML scores for Vietnamese (M = 5.69, SD = 1.19) and Hungarian (M = 5.45, SD = 1.51) teenagers . Smoking media literacy scores in this study did not vary significantly by sex (p = .66).…”

“…Recognizing that messages about tobacco can appear in a number of contexts and that media literacy skills extend beyond analyzing smoking messages, the scale also includes items about general media literacy as well as SML. The scale was shown to have strong internal consistency when it was developed (alpha = .87), and acceptable internal consistency in a Hungarian population in which it was tested (alpha = .78) . In this study, the scale had very good reliability (alpha = .86).…”

“…These domains represent the ideas that media messages have “audiences and authors,” may be manipulative or strategically ambiguous with their “messages and meanings,” and are not necessarily accurate in their “representations and reality.” Using this framework to generate measurement items, they developed and validated an 18‐item SML scale and found that in a sample of primarily middle‐class white urban high school students, every 1‐point increase in SML on a 10‐point scale is associated with a 22% reduction in the odds of being a smoker and a 31% decrease in susceptibility to smoking . Subsequently, SML has been found to be associated with either smoking, susceptibility to beginning to smoke, or both, in at least 7 separate studies with 6 different adolescent populations, including American, Argentine, Vietnamese, and Hungarian teenagers . This study sought to add information to the growing body of evidence for the usefulness of SML from a sample of American middle school students, by testing for associations between SML, susceptibility to using tobacco, and risk factors likely to increase susceptibility.…”

“…Salgado et al examined indigenous Argentine 10th graders with high smoking rates, and found that higher SML was associated with lower smoking and susceptibility to smoking. Page et al found that for both Hungarian and Vietnamese teenagers, SML was associated with current smoking, but not susceptibility to smoking. Despite these efforts to examine SML's relevance in a variety of cultures, to date, SML's relationship with smoking variables has been tested primarily with high school students; one study also included eighth graders, but was conducted in Hungary, a country where a third of 13‐ to 15‐year‐olds smoke .…”

“…19 Subsequently, SML has been found to be associated with either smoking, susceptibility to beginning to smoke, or both, in at least 7 separate studies with 6 different adolescent populations, including American, Argentine, Vietnamese, and Hungarian teenagers. 18,[20][21][22][23][24] This study sought to add information to the growing body of evidence for the usefulness of SML from a sample of American middle school students, by testing for associations between SML, susceptibility to using tobacco, and risk factors likely to increase susceptibility. This study examines a younger age group than nearly all previous research, using data collected during the implementation of a media literacy-based antitobacco curriculum for seventh and eighth graders funded by the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services.…”