Abstract:
Adolescent smoking has increased, even though many non-smoking campaigns were promoted through public media and pictorial warnings were printed on cigarette packs. This study investigated the influence of public media toward the intention not to smoke among Grade 2 students. The sample was 556 students who were randomly selected by multi-stage sampling from lower secondary public schools in Trat province. The data were collected by distributing questionnaires to students in their classrooms. The data were analyzed using Pearson product moment correlation. Influence was analyzed using multiple linear regressions. The results showed that media affected 97.8 % of students by reducing their intention to try smoking. The factors which were related to media effects were female gender (= - 0.78; 95% CI = - 1.23, - 0.33), understanding the meaning of public media (= - 0.43; 95% CI = -0.64, -0.22), understanding the meaning of pictorial warnings on cigarette packs (= - 0.18; 95% CI = - 0.30, - 0.07), intention not to try smoking (= - 0.12; 95% CI = - 0.21, - 0.04), considering non-smoking perception from public media’s influence (= - 0.09; 95% CI = -0.14, - 0.05) and the fear of pictorial warnings on cigarette packs (= - 0.07; 95% CI = -0.10, - 0.03). All these factors negatively influenced smoking intention. Therefore, public media and pictorial warnings on cigarette packs should be clear and simple enough to be easily understood. Non-smoking spots in T.V. campaigns should make students concerned about relevant health impacts, and pictorial warnings on cigarette packs should clearly show fatal effects to make students fear smoking effects and not want to try smoking.
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