Relationships Between Select Protective Factors and Tobacco Use

Students enrolled in Roanoke County Schools in 2003 became voluntary participants in the Communities That Care Youth Survey (CTCYS), which had been administered to a group (N = 3022) of 6th through 12th graders. The students answered multiple choice questions to determine their attitudes concerning many important topics within their home, school, and community domains. The carefully documented evaluation was conducted to determine the significance of two protective factors, which were employed to explain associations between students who stated that their parents had clear alcohol, tobacco, and drug use rules in the home as well as those who stated they frequently attended religious services and activities, termed parent efficacity and religiosity, respectively. Because risk factors are common among adolescents and few well-designed studies are addressing the benefits of parent efficacity or religiosity as protective factors, this study analyzed the CTCYS data utilizing meta-analyses to assess the efficacy of these two environmental factors in relation to students’ expressed perceptions of smoking cigarettes as a popular adolescent risk activity. Variables are unique to each individual and sample, therefore, multiple factors demonstrating risk and protective qualities were measured using a 0 to 8 point Likert summated rating scale. The various areas were examined according to frequency of risk behavior (i.e., smoking status - current, past, or never). Findings yielded statistically conclusive relationships within the participant responses using Chi-square analysis at the 0.05 level (2-sided), indicating a significant level of interaction between the select protective factors and tobacco use study variables.