The Structural Model of Attitudes toward Smoking and Concern about Weight and Diet Based on Self-Compassion in Female Students: The Mediating Role of Perceived Socio-Cultural Pressure

Today, smoking and the problems of obesity or weight loss are one of the major concerns of the World Health Organization, especially in children and adolescents. This study aimed to predict the attitudes toward cigarette smoking and concern about weight and diet based on self-compassion with the mediating role of perceived socio-cultural pressure.

The research method was descriptive-correlational. The statistical population consisted of teenage secondary school girls in Alborz province in the 97-98 academic year. Among them, 300 individuals were selected by multistage random sampling method. The instruments used were the attitudes toward smoking scale (Shore & et al, 2000), the worry over weight and diet questionnaire (Kagan & Squires, 1984), the self-compassion questionnaire (Neff 2003) and the perceived socio-cultural pressure questionnaire (Stice & bearman, 2001). Data were analyzed by structural equation modeling method using SPSS24 and AMOS24 software.

The results showed that the proposed model best fitted the data. According to the results, perceived socio-cultural pressure has a mediating role in the relationship between self-compassion with attitudes toward smoking and concern about weight and diet. Also, self-compassion is not directly related with attitudes toward smoking (P<0.05, β= -0/0083) and concern about weight and diet (P<0.05, β=0.002) but is directly related to perceived socio-cultural pressure (P<0.05, β=0.222). Perceived socio-cultural pressure is not directly related to attitudes toward smoking (P< 0.05, β=0.074) but is directly related to the concern about weight and diet (P<0.05, β=0.139). Also, the indirect effect of self-compassion (P<0.05) was confirmed by perceived socio-cultural pressure on concerns about weight and diet. While the results showed that there was no significant indirect relationship between self-compassion and perceived socio-cultural pressure with attitudes toward cigarette smoking. A significant indirect effect of self-compassion (P<0.05) was confirmed by perceived socio-cultural pressure on the attitudes toward smoking and concern about weight and diet.

The results showed that high self-compassion female students had less concern about their weight and diet and perceived less socio-cultural pressure. Therefore, it is recommended to develop treatment programs based on compassion to prevent problems related to concerns about weight and diet for students.