The Association between Smoking and Health Risk Behaviours among University Students in Greece.

Background: Youth smoking is an issue of great importance as it is responsible for premature death and serious related diseases. There are several determinants related to smoking, especially among young people, which should be recognized, as they may vary in different social backgrounds. Objectives: The present paper aims to examine the association between smoking and key determinants, such as self-perceived health status, health risk behaviours and socio-economic factors as well among university students in Greece. Further, our study examines how smoking is affected by an additional variable measuring the applied knowledge of people on health issues, known as "health literacy". Methodology: The study is based on data derived from a survey which was carried out in 14 Higher Tertiary Public universities and Technological Educational Institutes in Greece receiving a random sample of 1,526 students, during the period 15-30 April 2013. Summary statistics, correlations and regressions were used to assess the association between smoking and estimators. Results: Our results suggested a significantly negative association between smoking and perceived health status (coef; -0.004). Moreover, regular workout was found to be negatively correlated to smoking (coef; -0.168), while, respondents who consume alcohol seem to be related positively with tobacco use (coef; 0,245). With respect to demographic variables, our results demonstrated that lower income groups used to smoke less (coef; - 0.066). In contrast, the effect of health literacy on smoking is not significant. While our results are coherent with previous studies, several findings are worth further research. Conclusions: Acknowledging the major factors associated with smoking can lead to more effective and targeted interventions, which promote healthy behaviour and self-efficacy; both playing a key role in providing the necessary confidence to an adolescent so as not to engage in unhealthy behaviours like smoking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]