West Asia Organization for Cancer Prevention (WAOCP), APOCP's West Asia Chapter. Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention 1513-7368 14 11 2013 11 01 Correlates of Susceptibility to Smoking among Secondary School Students in Kota Tinggi District, Johor, Malaysia 6971 6978 28397 EN Journal Article 1970 01 01 Background: Smoking among adolescents has been linked to a variety of adverse and long term healthconsequences. “Susceptibility to smoking” or the lack of cognitive commitment to abstain from smoking is animportant predictor of adolescent smoking. In 2008, we conducted a study to determine the psycho-sociologicalfactors associated with susceptibility to smoking among secondary school students in the district of Kota Tinggi,Johor. Materials and Methods: Two thousand seven hundred students were randomly selected by proportionalstratified sampling. Analyses on 1,736 non-smoking students revealed that prevalence of adolescents susceptibleto smoking was 16.3%. Results: Male gender (aOR=2.05, 95%CI= 1.23-3.39), poor academic achievement (aOR1.60, 95%CI 1.05-2.44), ever-smoker (aOR 2.17, 95%CI 1.37-3.44) and having a smoking friend (aOR 1.76, 95%CI1.10-2.83) were associated with susceptibility to smoking, while having the perception that smoking prohibitionin school was strictly enforced (aOR 0.55, 95%CI 0.32-0.94), and had never seen friends smoking in a schoolcompound (aOR 0.59, 95%CI 0.37-0.96) were considered protective factors Conclusions: These results indicatethat follow-up programmes need to capitalise on the modifiable factors related to susceptibility to smoking bygetting all stakeholders to be actively involved to stamp out smoking initiation among adolescents.

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