Smoking among the secondary and higher educational institutions students: results of the Russian multicenter study

Object of the study. Prevalence of smoking among students aged 15—25 in secondary and higher educational institutions Objective. To assess the impact of socio-demographic characteristics on the smoking status among students in secondary and higher educational institutions. Materials and methods. The study is cross-sectional, conducted in 2022—2023 in 6 regions of Russia among students in secondary (colleges) and higher educational institutions. Smoking status and socio-demographic characteristics were obtained by a survey method. Due to differences in the sample structure, standardization by gender, age and region was carried out to assess the population prevalence of smoking and consumption of certain types of tobacco products. The sample structure with a potentially uniform distribution was taken as the standard, that is, equal shares of men. women, age groups, regional samples. Statistical analysis of differences in standardized indicators was carried out using the Pearson Chi-square test. Main results. The standardized prevalence of smoking in the population of students aged 15—25 is 23.3%. Standardized values of the proportion of smokers consuming various types of tobacco products were: 42.7% — classic cigarettes, 77.9% — electronic cigarettes, 21.1% — other tobacco products. Regression analysis shows that the likelihood of smoking is influenced not only by gender and age, but also by the type of educational institution, as well as the income level of the student’s family. Thus, the likelihood of smoking is 2.41 times higher among college students compared to university students (OR=2.41, 95% CI 1.68—3.47). In addition, students from high-income families were more likely to smoke than their peers from low-income families (OR=1.43, 95% CI 1.03—1.98).