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Show Teens Likely To Puff If Friends Do Teenagers are more likely to smoke if their close friends smoke, a U. of U. study confirms. con-firms. IN A STUDY of 62 college students, psychology graduate student Robert B. Handley found that the influence of a significant friend and the smoking status of closest friends in senior high school have the greatest impact on determining de-termining whether an adolescent adoles-cent smokes. Questionnaires and interviews inter-views examined students' smoking histories and the influence in-fluence of five factors: peer and family modeling of smoking; smo-king; parental approach to smoking; relationship with parents; pa-rents; and rebelliousness of adolescent peers. PEER MODELING ranked highest in influence. Most smokers, Handley found, picked up the habit between age 16 and 18 "a time when peers exert the greatest influence." influ-ence." Of the 62 students interviewed, inter-viewed, 52 had smoked one or more times at the median age of 13. Their principal reason was "curiosity" and they generally gen-erally shared the first cigarette with a friend. Only 32 had become be-come regular smokers during adolescence, and most reported re-ported peer influence as the major reason for picking up the habit. HANDLEY SAYS research on prevention should examine imitation among adolescent friends and why smoking becomes be-comes sanctioned behavior within some circles and not in others. How parents dealt with smoking within the family also affected adolescent behavior, the study showed. A negative attitude apparently is not a deferent de-ferent since both smokers and non-smokers said their parents were opposed to them smoking. smok-ing. Handley found that parents pa-rents could exert some influence influ-ence if they intervened before the teen years when kids are likely to experiment. Children of parents who consistently discouraged smoking during adolescence were also less likely to smoke. FAMILY MODELS didn't influence smoking as much as expected according to the study. Families, says Hand-ley, Hand-ley, may operate more indirectly in-directly by influencing the teen'i selection of peers who might or might not smoke. While rebelliousness and antisocial characteristics are significant factors in smoking, the study didn't show them as making much difference in a teen's decision to smoke. Handley notes that since he sampled a college population, the degree of rebelliousness may have been less than for non-academically oriented groups. His study did show, however, that smokers tended to perform worse in school than non-smokers. |