ارتباط بين فعاليت هاي مذهبي و مصرف سيگار در دانشجويان يكي از دانشگاههاي كرمان

The relationship between religious practices and cigarette smoking among students in one of the Kerman universities

Introduction : Most of authorities consider cigarette smoking as the first step towards other abused substance consumption in young population . Although the studies on rela­tionship between health and religion is still in the infancy stage , but a remarkable increase in the number of the studies which have been conducted to assess the relationship between religious bounds and cigarette smoking, can be seen especially in Christians. As a result we carried out a study to determine the prevalence of cigarette smoking in a group of Iranian Muslim students. Also the relationship between the religious practices and cigarette smok­ing was assessed . Methods : In this cross-sectional study 950 students in one of the kerman universities , were asked to fill self administered questionnaire , without Identity and contained some demographic information and questions on cigarette smoking and religious practices. Ei­ther daily smoker or occasional smokers were defined as cigarette smokers. As religion is a multi-dimensional concept, the participants were asked about their mosque attendance , obligatory religious practices ( saying prayer and fasting ) and reading Koran . Logistic regression was applied to assess the relationship between predictor variables ( religious measures) and cigarette smoker. Result : Considering the left 833 questionnaire went under final analysis 54.1% were female , 89.3% were single , 129 were college students while others had higher education (84.5%) and all were Muslims . 17% were occasional smokers whereas 4.5% were daily smokers. 40.1 % of male students and 5.8% of female students were smokers. The average age of starting smoking was I6.8±3.5 and 68.6% started smoking before 18 . Performing single variable Analysis, a significant difference was detected in prevalence of smokers considering these studied variables : gender, marital status , salary per month , aver­age of scores, smoker friends, smoker parents and family , reading Koran , saying prayer , mosque attendance , fasting . But using multi variable analysis, only 4 variables: gender , average of scores, cigarette consumption by friends and saying prayer, remained in the model. Conclusion : Overcoming the anger and depression were considered as the most Impor­tant causes to smoke cigarette in students points of view . As a consequence in this study cigarette consumption in friends was defined as a risk factor. And a protective role was shown for saying prayer.