Acceptance of smoking cessation aid and its associated factors among smokers of postgraduate international students in UPM 2017

Introduction: Smoking cessation aids have been shown to be effective in increasing the quitting rate in those who smoke cigarette within the community because it offers guidance and counseling along with proper pharmacological intervention to the relevant subjects. Objective: The aim of this study was to determine knowledge and acceptance of smoking cessation aids and its associated factors among smoker postgraduate international students in Universiti Putra Malaysia. Methods: A cross-sectional study was carried out among 367 smoker postgraduate international students in Universiti Putra Malaysia. The sampling method in this study was simple random sampling. The data was collected using a pretested self-administerated questionnaire, consisting of 5 sections: socio-demography, behavioral factors, knowledge, residency factors and acceptance of smoking cessation aids. Data was analyzed using SPSS version 22. Descriptive statistics for the distribution, median, interquartile range and analytical studies using chi-square for associations of categorical data were used. The associations were considered significant at P <0.05. Result: There were a total of 367 international smoker postgraduate students with 80% response rate. Majority of the students were males (88%), single (68.7%), master (71.9%) and Arabs (48.2%) with median age of 28 (IQR=6). Many of the students, 209 (56.9%) has a good level of knowledge on smoking cessation aid. Most of the smoker students had intentions (79.8%) and tried (63.5%) to quit smoking previously. The respondents have fair level of acceptance towards smoking cessation aids, in particular 210 (57.2%) of them had high level of acceptance. Gender and marital status were significantly (χ2 = 6.270, df = 1, P = 0.012) and (χ2 = 13.072, df = 1, P < 0.001) associated with acceptance of smoking aids respectively. Regarding behaviors, the intention to quit smoking and ever tried to quit smoking in the past were significantly associated with acceptance of smoking cessation (χ2 = 9.232, df = 1, P = 0.002) and (χ2 = 12.376, df = 1, P < 0.001) respectively. Knowledge on different types of smoking cessation aids was also significantly associated to the acceptance of smoking cessation aids (χ2 = 16.140, df = 1, P < 0.001). Concerning residential factors, respondent living with their family members or those having a friend / hostel mates who smoke cigarette and used any type of smoking cessation aid were significantly associated with acceptance of smoking cessation aid (χ2 = 10.883, df = 1, P = 0.001) and (χ2 = 27.785, df = 1, P < 0.001) respectively. Conclusion: This study gives an insight of some components associated with acceptance of the methods. There is the need for health education knowledge regarding SCA and specifically for males, those who live with smoking families, friends or hostel mates in UPM and the overall population.

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