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Hikmet Yazıcı
Smoking prevalence decreases in adult population (CDC, 1999), while it tends to increase
among young adults (Stanton, Oei, & Silva, 1994). This situation highlights the impor-
tance of examining the reasons why young people smoke. Turkey has a young popula-
tion whose average age is 29,3 (
). In Turkey, 40.4% of individuals
between the ages of 25-34 use tobacco and tobacco products (TSI, 2008). In this study,
the relation between smoking among young people and psychological symptoms is in-
vestigated.
Methods
Participants
The sample of this study comprised students of the Karadeniz Technical University in
Trabzon. The total number of students is 779, randomly selected from various faculties,
departments and programs, including 446 female (57.30%) and 333 male (42.70%) stu-
dents. The average age of the sample was 20.92 (SD=1.73) years, ranging from the age of
16 to 30. Of the 779 students, 206 (26.4%) were categorized as smokers and 573 (73.6%)
as non-smokers.
Instruments
Demographic Characteristics and Smoking Status:
The
assessment included demo-
graphic characteristics, as well as a smoking status questionnaire developed by the author
of this study that inquired about gender, parental smoking and socioeconomic status (SES).
Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI):
The BSI, developed by Derogatis (1992), is a men-
tal-health–screening instrument composed of 53 items represented by nine symptom
scales: (1) Somatization (SOM), (2) Obsessive-Compulsive (O-C), (3) Interpersonal Sensi-
tivity (INT), (4) Depression (DEP), (5) Anxiety (ANX), (6) Hostility (HOS), (7) Phobic Anxiety
(PHOB), (8) Paranoid Ideation (PAR) and (9) Psychoticism (PSY) and three global mental
health indexes. The inventory has been translated and adapted to Turkish by Şahin and
Durak (1994). The Turkish version of the scale appeared to have five dimensions: anxiety,
depression, self-negativity, somatization, and hostility. In the current study, Global Sever-
ity Index (GSI), which provides a composite measure of the severity of overall symptoms
(scores ranging from 0 to 4), was used as an index of global mental health. The alpha
coefficients of the factor subscale ranged between .70 (for depression) and .88 (for so-
matization). The correlation coefficients of the factor subscale with the other instruments
ranged between -.45 and .71.
Procedure
The survey instruments were distributed in a classroom setting by the course instructor.
The questionnaires took approximately 25 minutes to complete. No identifying informa-
tion was collected during the study. Involvement in the study was completely voluntary.
