Young people and smoking

Abstract

A survey of people aged between eleven and fifteen inclusive which was added to the BHPS in its fourth wave asked a range of questions but focusing especially on health, health awareness, and aspects of psychological well-being. These included questions on smoking and on attitudes to smoking. Comparisons are made between actual smoking, attitudes to smoking, attitudes to health in general, and a measure of reading competence. These are then supplemented by data which locate children's smoking in the family context, looking first at the smoking and attitudes to smoking of parents, and then comparing siblings. A full array of variables covering the children's own characteristics, aspects of parenting, family composition and the social class of parents are finally entered into a multivariate model which takes the probability of young people smoking as the dependent variable.