Background: Survey data suggest that in Texas Latino youth exhibit higher rates of susceptibility to smoking than youth from other ethnic groups. In this analysis we examined the relationship between susceptibility to smoking and well-known risk factors associated with smoking initiation among a cohort of 11 to 13 year old Mexican origin youth residing in Houston, Texas.
Background Recent studies have found that knowledge about cancer prevention and treatment differs across ethnic and socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds, which could directly impact our decisions to engage in protective health behaviors. In this study, we examined sociodemographic-based differences in cancer knowledge and health beliefs and examined differences in the accuracy of the cancer knowledge based on health beliefs. Methods Cross-sectional surveys were conducted between July 1995 and March 2004 on adult, healthy, cancer-free control participants (N = 2074; 50% male) enrolled into a molecular epidemiological case-control study. Most were non-Hispanic white, 14% were African American, and 8% were Hispanic. Participants were personally interviewed on 6 items assessing health beliefs and 10 items assessing cancer knowledge. Results Unadjusted differences in cancer knowledge were observed by gender, age, ethnicity, household income, educational attainment, and smoking status. After adjusting for the other sociodemographic characteristics, women had more accurate knowledge than men, the accuracy of knowledge increased with higher educational attainment and annual household income, and never smokers had more accurate knowledge than ever smokers (P < .01 for all). Moreover, accurate cancer knowledge was associated with protective health beliefs; eg, the belief that changing health habits was worthwhile was associated with more accurate knowledge. Conclusions Results emphasize the need to develop health education programs that enhance cancer knowledge among individuals of low SES and foster protective health beliefs.
Purpose-In Texas, Mexican American (MA) adolescents, and in particular boys, are at increased risk of experimenting with cigarettes compared to their black or white counterparts. Positive outcome expectations (POE), the functional social significance ascribed to cigarettes, and subjective social status (SSS), the adolescents' subjective views of where they lie in the school-based social hierarchy, are independent predictors of smoking. The goal of this study was to test the hypothesis that SSS moderates the relationship between POE and experimentation with cigarettes.Methods-Moderating effects of SSS were examined using a between-subjects 2 by 2 ANOVA and unconditional logistic regression analyses. Using a prospective study design, we followed 1,142 MA adolescents aged 11 to 13. Participants completed a baseline survey at home, which assessed POE, SSS, and smoking and were followed via telephone at 6 monthly intervals over a 12 month period to assess changes in smoking behavior.Results-At follow-up, there were 99 new experimenters. Consistent with our hypothesis, adolescents who reported moderate-low SSS and who held POE at baseline were more likely to have experimented with cigarettes at either follow-up than their peers with moderate-low SSS who held less POE (OR=1.92, CI: 1.02-3.58). There was no association between outcome expectations and experimenting among adolescents with high SSS (OR=1.79, CI: 0.73-4.36). Low SSS boys were more likely to experiment than girls and high SSS boys.Conclusions-The results of this study indicate that adolescents with moderate-low SSS hold different outcome expectations about smoking than their higher SSS peers. The results underscore the possibility that moderate-low SSS adolescents view behaviors such as smoking as a way to achieve higher SSS and thereby increase their peer social standing. Our results suggest that, in addition to tailoring intervention efforts by gender, placing adolescents of similar social standing to one another within the school into intervention groups that are led by a peer-nominated peer may increase the overall effectiveness of these peer-led prevention efforts.Corresponding author and reprint requests to:
on smoking. Pomerleau et al. (2005) examined the reliability of reports on parental smoking by adult children, while Wong et al. (2004) validated the agreement between parental and child reports (age 7-14 years) among smokers by measuring environmental tobacco smoke. To our knowledge, only one study, based on a low income inner-city Canadian population (Barnett, O'Loughlin, Paradis, & Renaud, 1997), has examined reliability between child (age 9-13 years) and parent reports. This study demonstrated a 93.1% agreement rate among student-mother pairs and 86.4% agreement rate among student-father pairs. People of Mexican origin represent the largest and most rapidly growing minority group in the United States (U.S. Census Bureau, 2005). We have found that maternal smoking places mothers ' adolescents at increased risk for smoking among a U.S.-based predominantly low income inner-city Mexican-origin population (Wilkinson et al., 2008). Thus, the main aim of this study was to examine concordance between adolescents ' proxy reports and mothers ' self-reports on mothers ' smoking. Methods The mothers included in this analysis were participants in a population-based prospective cohort of Mexican-American households ongoing in the Department of Epidemiology at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center since July 2001. Henceforth, this cohort study will be referred to as the Mexican-American Cohort Study (MACS). The adolescent participants (N = 1,328) are part of a prospective subcohort (nested within MACS) examining genetic and nongenetic factors associated with smoking initiation among Mexican-origin youth between 11 and 13 years of age at baseline. This nested cohort study will be referred to as the Mexican-American Tobacco Use in Children (MATCh) study. Detailed descriptions of the recruitment methodology for MACS (Wilkinson et al., 2005) and MATCh (Wilkinson et al., 2008) have been published.
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