The Perspectives of Adolescents on Smoking Habits as a Reference for the Prevention Program

Abstract

Background: Religious factor has been used in tobacco control campaign but due to different perception among the Muslim scholars that might induce on the followers then, the control program strategics is still interesting to study. This qualitative research is, therefore aimed to explore the perspective of Muslim adolescents on smoking habits, as a reference in developing effective prevention intervention programs.Methods: Three Focus Group Discussion (FGD) sets, consisting of a total of 24 junior high school students were the main source data for this phenomenological qualitative study. The discussion guide was developed by researchers, based on the reviewed literature and validated by experts. The research finding was analyzed by using an inductive-content method with systematical steps based on the stages of qualitative data analysis.Results: Adolescent perspectives on smoking were grouped into two themes that were (a) perception, which encompasses three sub-themes consisting of smoking as the social habit, the contradictive feeling, and the Islamic perspective, (b) Smoking-related factors involving peer pressure, the parents’ smoking status, curiosity and masculinity.Conclusion: The results indicated that adolescents consider smoking as a social habit with the existence of contradictive feelings. Their Islamic perspective believes that smoking is preferable but not forbidden by religion thought. The smoking habit also was stimulated by pressure from their smoker-peer, immitating their smoker-parents, being curiosity and feeling masculinity. We suggested the health proffesionals who intersted in developing smoking prevention programs to consider about the adolescent perspective about smoking habit. So, the prevention program will be more effective and culturally appropriate for adolescents.