Abstract:
Youth smoking is an important public health problem in Thailand. Cigarette are always the first substance induce youths to other drugs. This study aimed to examine smoking avoidance behavior and its influencing factors among male junior high school students in opportunity expansion school. Simple random sampling was used to recruit 168 junior high school students who met the inclusion criteria. Research instruments consisted of 1) personal information 2) smoking avoidance behaviors 3) optimism 4) adversity quotient 5) attitude towards smoking 6) media consumption behavior with intelligence and 7) peer group influence. Cronbachs alpha reliabilities of the 2-7 questionnaires were .82, .80, .80, .81, .81 and .85 respectively. Data were analyzed by using descriptive statistics, and Stepwise multiple regression analysis. The results revealed that the mean smoking avoidance behavior score of sample was in high level (M = 18.9, SD = 3.34). The predictive factors that significantly predicted smoking avoidance behavior included optimism (β = .301, p< .001), and attitude towards smoking (β = -.242, p< .004). These variables together explained 8.9 % of the variance in smoking avoidance behavior (R 2 = .089, p< .001). The results of this study suggest that nurses, health personnel, and the person who work in government and private educational institutions could bring the result including optimism and attitude towards smoking to be main concern to develop guidelines or programs to promote psychological immunity in order to prevent youths from smoking.