Factors affecting cigarette smoking among adolescents in South Korea, Vietnam, and Thailand

The current study was designed to describe risk and preventive factors related to cigarette smoking among adolescents in South Korea, Vietnam, and Thailand.

A cross-sectional descriptive design was used. Student data were extracted from three national data sets, specifically the Global Youth Tobacco Survey from each country. Complex sampling multinomial logistic regression was performed to find factors related to current smoking.

The prevalence of cigarette smoking was 4.7% in South Korean students, 2.8% in Vietnamese students, and 10.9% in Thai students. Students shared three risk factors related to current smoking: male sex, use of other tobacco products, and susceptibility to smoking. Additionally, only one preventive factor of cigarette smoking was found among South Korean adolescents: exposure to antitobacco advertisements. The findings suggest that personal, familial, social, and public area characteristics are associated with smoking among adolescents from these nations.

These results could be useful for screening students vulnerable to cigarette smoking and the collaborative planning of interventions to prevent adolescents from smoking in these three Asian countries.