Hygiena 2013, 58(2):49-55 | DOI: 10.21101/hygiena.a0963

Opinions, Attitudes and Behaviour of Parents Participating in the "Non-Smoking is Normal" Programme

Drahoslava Hrubá¹, Iva Žaloudíková²

¹ Masarykova univerzita, Lékařská fakulta, Ústav preventivního lékařství, Brno

² Masarykova univerzita, Pedagogická fakulta, Katedra psychologie, Brno

Introduction: In developed countries, child exposure to tobacco smoke at home poses a major health risk. In the school-based educational programme "Non-Smoking is normal", active parental cooperation is requested for the purpose of creating voluntary smoke-free homes. The effectiveness of the programme was tested both in the pilot study involving 10 primary schools in Brno and Frýdek Místek, and in the wider study that comprised 25 primary schools in Brno, Zlín, and smaller regional towns involved in the project. A further 25 schools from the same localities were taken as a control.

Methods: During the five-year follow-up semi-longitudinal study, parents were repeatedly informed of the main themes of the programme and asked for participation in several tasks. The objectives of these home tasks were discussion about the health consequences of smoking and types of dependence, as well as inclusion of physical exercise as part of the children' daily schedule and adoption of dietary guidelines. Every year, a short anonymous questionnaire testing knowledge, opinions and the level of children' exposure to passive smoking was sent to participating parents. In the last stage of the programme, data obtained from 266 parents of children was processed using EPI INFO software.

Results: Significantly less parents who tolerated smoking at home were well informed about the health hazards of smoking (46.9% vs. 70.8%, p<0.001), about the high risk of addiction (57.8% vs. 79.7%, p<0.01), and about the role of smoking family members as bad role models (12.5% vs. 23.3%, p<0.05). These parents were also more often sceptial on the issue of prevention (29.7% vs. 12.9%, p<0.05) and fewer of them discussed the subject of smoking with their childrenl (76.6% vs. 88.6%, p<0.05). Parents underestimated the effects of smoking at home, and only 3.4% of parents changed their prior tolerance to smokers in order to adopt strict smoke-free rules at home. Almost 11% of parents reported cessation of smoking during the period of the study.

Conclusion: The programme had only a limited impact on the opinions, attitudes and behaviour of parents participating in the Non-Smoking is Normal programme.

Keywords: prevention of smoking, passive smoking, smoking in children

Received: July 2012; Accepted: January 8, 2013; Published: June 1, 2013  Show citation