[Cigarette smoking by secondary school students in the country of Rzeszow]

A last ten years cigarette smoking has become very popular. The most startling finding is the increase in the amount of young people who are becoming smokers. At is well known, that smoking cigarettes causes irreversible changes in the bodies of young people. The main objective of the thesis was to document and interpret the spread of cigarette smoking among secondary school of aged students in Rzeszow country. The research was carried--out in June, 2007. 193 students took part in the research study, they were between the ages of 13 and 16 years old, 52.84% were girls and 47.16% were boys. This group of young people was specifically selected to cover both the city and its surrounding area in the country of Rzeszow. Of the students who took part in the research 103 (53.36%) were from the surrounding countryside and 90 (46.63%) from the city. The research findings were gathered using diagnostic techniques, including questionnaires prepared by the author. To analyze the statistics the author used the test of independence chi Parsons Square, and the variety analyze (ANOVA). The research showed that the majority of young people (83.94%) withheld the fact that they were smoking cigarettes. 67.24% of the students in the study were secondary school aged boys. Most of them (83.87%) smoke between 1 to 5 cigarettes per day. Even for those who smoked, when asked they said, that health was most important to them. It is surprising, that smokers who smoke everyday chose health as their most important value. After analyzing the conditions which affect smoking, we found that many of their colleagues (77.20%), teachers (63.73%) and parents (39.89%) smoked also; although that didn't affect the regularity of smoking by the students surveyed.