Study of Cigarette Smoking Status Using Extended Parallel Process Model (EPPM) among Secondary School Male Students in Shiraz City

Smoking is recognized as the first preventable cause of mortality in the world. The early starting of cigarette smoking is a worrisome behaviour, which is considered as a strong predictor to show that, this behavior will be continued in the higher ages. Fear appeal theories play effective roles to prevent of this unhealthy behavior. The extended parallel process model (EPPM) is a model that is drived from fear appeal theories and applied as a theoretical framework to change the behavior. A total of 244 secondary school male students were participated in this cross sectional study in Shiraz. A multi step cluster sampling method was used in the present study. A questionnaire based on EPPM was used to collect the data. The results of this study showed that 6.9% of the students have had history smoking. In this study, it has been reported that 19.9% of the students have started the cigarette with suggessting of their friends. The score mean of perceived susceptibility regarding the side effects of smoking among the students was low (38.2). The score mean of perceived response efficacy of recommended message to avoid the smoking was moderate (51.8).Score mean of knowledge of the smoker students(57.1) was lower than the nonsmoker students(61.4),while score mean of perceived susceptibility of the nonsmoker students (37.8) was lower than it in the smoker students(45.2) and at high risk students(44.7). In addition, score means of perceived severity, response efficacy, self efficacy and intention of the smoker students (71.8, 43.4, 62.3 and 69.5, respectively) were lower than those in the smoker and at high risk students. Results of this study showed that the rate of perceived susceptibility of undesirable outcome regarding to the smoking was low among the studied population. Therefore, it is recommended that with applying appropriate theories of trained healthy behavior among the students, the susceptibility and response efficacies to avoid of smoking are increased.