Hashim Raza Jafferi, Ejaz Ahmad Khan, Zahid Ahmad Butt, Assad Hafeez.
Prevelance and predisposition of smoking among the female university students of Islamabad, Pakistan.
Pak J Public Health Jan ;4(3):9-15.

Background: Women, like men, from both lower and upper social class of the society do smoke. Our study tries to calculate prevalence of cigarette smoking among female university students in Pakistan. The objectives of this study were to (a) determine the prevalence of smoking, and (b) to assess predisposing factors for smoking among female university students. Methods: We used mixed methods for this cross sectional survey. Both the public and private universities in Islamabad were included completing a sample size of 969 respondents. We conducted Focus Group Discussions followed by face to face interviews with semi-structured questionnaire. Results: We calculated prevalence of ever-smoked female university students at 12%. Anti- smoking campaigns could outreach 20% of the respondents. A quarter of the respondents could list more than three hazards of smoking. Ever smokers were predominantly present in the rst year (36.1%) and the fourth year (35%) of the university. More than a third of ever smokers were from a monthly average household income of US$ 600-1000. Mean age at trying smoking for the rst time was 16 years with a standard deviation of +4.40. Respondents having smokers as their friends were 2.5 times more likely to develop smoking habits compared to non-smokers (p value =0.000, CI: 2.0852.977), and having no friend who smoked had an odds of 0.498(p=0.00 CI: 0.393-0.631). Despite of being aware of the hazards and consequences of smoking, they still smoked. Conclusion: Prevalence of smoking among educated women in the universities of the capital of Pakistan is relatively high, with a start at a younger age having friends who smoked. (Pak J Public Health 2014; 4(3):1-7 ) Keywords: Smoking, women, education, university, prevalence, Pakistan

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