Cigarette smoking among school pupils in Italy

The aim of this study was to investigate the behavior of young subjects towards cigarette smoking. We selected two homogeneous samples of about 500 people from the student population high schools in two Italian cities, Reggio Emilia in the north and Catania in the south. The students were given a questionnaire containing 23 principal questions regarding the social-familial environment, the habit of smoking, the habit as it related to the social environment, the correlations between smoking and health, and the possible behavior towards smoking and smokers. The observed findings were processed with the time-sharing General Electric system, using a modified statistical package.