Association Between Cigarette Smoking and Low Physical Activity in 6th Grade Students Enrolled in the Goals for Health Project
Hillary Taylor
Objective: To determine the association between cigarette smoking and low physical activity in sixth grade students enrolled in the Goals for Health project conducted at Virginia Commonwealth University’s Life Skills Center
Methods: Nonparametric, univariate and multivariate statistical analysis methods were used to calculate the odds ratios for smoking status and other identified risk factors for low physical activity levels. Adjusted odds ratios and their 95% confidence intervals were calculated by stratifying the risk factors by ever tried cigarettes and frequency of cigarettes smoked in the past 30 days. SPSS 10.0 was the statistical software used for the analysis.
Results: The results indicate that 26.3% of low active students reported that they had ever tried cigarettes and 7.5% of these students reported smoking in the last 30 days. 4.1% of low active students reported trying 1-2 cigarettes in the past 30 days. No statistically significant relationship was found between low active students and ever tried cigarettes (OR=1.12 CI=0.77-1.65). The same was found to be true when examining the relationship between low active students and frequency of smoking in the last 30 days (0R=0.71 C10=36-1 .39). The results also indicated that low active girls were 31% less likely to have used cigarettes and to have smoked in the past 30 days than low active boys. Low active African Americans and other races were also shown to be less likely than low active Caucasians to have used cigarettes and to have smoked in the past 30 days (60% less and 58% less).
Conclusions: These data suggest that low physical activity and smoking status are not associated with each other. This is opposite of what many other studies suggest. Much of the available literature that has found an association between the two variables applies solely to adolescents instead of children. However, the majority of the study population is age 11 to 12. Therefore, more studies need to be conducted to find if there is a relationship between low physical activity and smoking status in children.
