Original ArticlesSmoking initiation in youth: The roles of gender, race, socioeconomics, and developmental status
Section snippets
Subjects and setting
Subjects were youths participating in the CHIC I and CHIC II studies who were followed longitudinally for 6 years. At the time of first data collection, the children were in third and fourth grades and were age 8–11 years of age (mean 9.2 ± 0.8). The initial sample (n = 2059) included 89 subjects from various racial and ethnic groups: 17 Hispanics, 25 Asians, 16 American Indians, and 31 “other and mixed.” These groups are not included in this analysis owing to the small number of subjects,
Results
The number of subjects for whom smoking data were available at each of the five data collection periods is shown in Table 1. Subject attrition over four of the five study time points ranged from 7.3% to 11.3%; there was a large drop in the sample size (41.7% of subjects) between Time 2 and Time 3. There were 2 years between those time points, and subjects had to reenroll in the study during that time. There was only 1 year between each of the other data collection points. Demographic
Discussion
This analysis of smoking in CHIC children shows that race, pubertal level, and family SES were very important factors in the initiation of smoking during childhood and adolescence. White children were more likely to begin smoking than African-American children. Children at higher Tanner stage of development were more likely to smoke. Low SES significantly increased the chance of a child’s beginning to smoke, and low-SES children were likely to begin trial smoking earlier, as were boys and those
Acknowledgements
This study was funded by Grant NR01837 from the National Institutes of Health (National Institute for Nursing Research).
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