[Selected psychosocial factors in 15-year-old current smokers and ex-smokers]

The aim of the paper was the study selected differences between 15-year-old adolescent current smokers and ex-smokers with regard to: self-efficacy, family relations, school psychosocial environment and perception of peer smoking. The anonymous survey was carried out in 2006, within HBSC study (Health Behaviour in School-aged Children), using a representative sample of 2287 persons in the mean age 15.7 years. Optional HBSC 2001/02 question about smoking status was applied again in Poland (i.e. whether a student is a smoker, ex-smoker or never smoker). We compared a group of N=365 smokers and N=384 ex-smokers, while never smokers were temporally excluded from our analysis. The international standard questionnaire was used. The results showed that adolescent ex-smokers in comparison with current smokers had more often higher self-efficacy (41% and 35.3%), assessed family relations as very good (42.1% and 31.4%), more seldom assessed school psychosocial environment as poor (40.5% and 52.1%), and more seldom considered their friends as heavy smokers (38.3% and 67.9%). The differences between smokers and ex-smokers were statistically significant mostly in girls. In the prevention strategies it is very important to take under consideration gender-specific psychosocial characteristics including: individual factors, family, school and peer environment. Our findings reveal that many psychosocial factors may be protective against tobacco dependence.