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Chronic dieting and the belief that smoking controls body weight in a biracial, population-based adolescent sample
R C Klesges1, V E Elliott, L A Robinson
1University of Memphis, Tennessee, USA. bklesges@cc.memphis.edu
Objective:
To evaluate the prevalence of weight concerns and smoking for body weight reasons as a function of race and gender.
Design:
A questionnaire measuring a number of factors thought to be predictive of smoking was administered.
Setting:
The Memphis (Tennessee) school system.
Participants:
Participants were 6961 seventh-grade students (mean age 13 years). This population consisted of 80.8% black children, 16.5% white children, and 2.7% of other ethnic origins.
Main Outcome Measures:
Weight concerns were assessed using items from a restraint scale. Students were questioned regarding their smoking status, beliefs that smoking controls body weight, and their own weight-control smoking behaviour.
Results:
Dietary restraint interacted with race in that, whereas white girls scored the highest on dietary restraint, black boys scored higher on dietary restraint than white boys. Almost 40% of subjects at this school level believed that smoking controls their body weight. Of the regular smokers, 12% indicated they have smoked to control their weight, with white girls endorsing this belief significantly more than other respondents.
Conclusions:
The propensity to smoke for weight control reasons, previously described by other researchers among white females of college and high-school age, was also found among this sample of students of junior high school age.