“Moving forward: a cross sectional baseline study of staff and student attitudes towards a totally smoke free university campus”

Abstract

BackgroundBaseline data were collected to inform the adoption, implementation and institutionalisation phases of a completely smoke free campus policy at a large Western Australian university with a diverse student and staff community.MethodsAn online survey was randomly emailed to staff and students to measure the attitudes towards and the acceptability and enforcement of the policy prior to implementation. In total, 969 respondents completed the survey.ResultsGeneral attitudes towards smoking were negative. While smokers, ex-smokers and non-smokers were supportive of smoke free policy on campus, 65.7% of respondents felt the campus should be completely smoke free. Respondents indicated a smoke free policy should be stringently enforced. The majority of respondents reported that they had been exposed to second-hand smoke on campus (n = 768; 79.5%).ConclusionTheory of Organisational Change provides a useful framework to support the implementation of the completely smoke free policy in the University setting. The implementation process needs to consider the broad range of issues associated with implementing a completely smoke free policy and address issues such as safety of smokers, ensuring smokers are not marginalised and ensuring a comprehensive program is implemented. These baseline findings can be used to advocate for the implementation of a comprehensive range of strategies that recognise the addictive nature of tobacco smoking and address attitude and behaviour change, environmental adaptations and effective implementation of the policy. Administration should consider smokers and non-smokers when policy is implemented.

Students' Knowledge and Attitudes Towards Smoke-Free Universities: Changes Since Enactment of Vietnamese Tobacco Control Legislation

“…A study in Australia at Curtin University found similar results for student awareness of an institutional smokefree policy, with only 56% of students aware that the university had a tobacco policy (Burns et al, 2013). This is comparable to the current study, where 57.2% were aware of the smoke-free policy in Phase 2.…”

“…A study in Saudi Arabia (Almutairi, 2014) showed strong support among nonsmokers for a total ban at a university (97.4% of students, 75.3% of academics, and 87.4% of staff), while support among smokers was significantly lower (75.1% of students, 63.2% of academics and 26.1% of staff). In another study, the support for a total smoking ban at Curtin University in Australia was lower than the above study, with 70.4% of staff and 74.7% of students agreeing that a completely smoke-free campus has a positive effect on quality of life (Burns et al, 2013). …”

“…This is comparable to the current study, where 57.2% were aware of the smoke-free policy in Phase 2. The percentage of smokers aware of the Curtin University policy (72.2%) was significantly higher than the percentage of ex-smokers (67.3%) and non-smokers (52.5%) (Burns et al, 2013).…”

The relationship between alcohol consumption and related harm among young university students

“…This method has been used successfully in other studies in this university. 23 The online survey yielded 1930 responses, and a further 628 students were randomly recruited by trained research assistants on campus market day. All data was collected in 2013 during July andAugust.…”

Consequences of Low Risk and Hazardous Alcohol Consumption among University Students in Australia and Implications for Health Promotion Interventions

“…The current study used methods consistent with those previously conducted at this university [23] [25]. Participants were drawn from a random cross-sectional sample of 6000,undergraduate, internally enrolled students, aged 18 -24 years, studying at the main metropolitan campus of a large Australian university.…”