MRC PhD student

Level of study: MA Research Psychology

Title: Adolescent’s perceptions of the onset of their cigarette smoking behaviour and the factors that maintain their habit.

Brief description of the project
Tobacco smoking remains the largest preventable behavioural cause of chronic disease and premature death. Many people continue to engage in this behaviour, despite the well-known negative health consequences. The most common form of smoking is cigarette smoking, which is a type of risk-taking behaviour that is becoming increasingly prevalent among adolescents. Cigarette consumption rates are increasing among adolescents in various parts of the world; each year nearly a million adolescents start to smoke. This behaviour, if continued into adulthood, may lead to a range of debilitating diseases of lifestyle. To identify factors associated with the initiation and maintenance of cigarette smoking the study explores South African adolescents’ perceptions of their cigarette smoking behaviour. The study is conducted in a qualitative paradigm using Polkinghorne’s narrative inquiry of the analysis of narrative type. Individual interviews were carried out on six boys and six girls from an English-medium high school within Cape Town. Their ages ranged from 16-18 years.

This study focused on the importance of adolescent health and how it is affected by factors associated with tobacco use in South Africa. Underlying risk and protective factors needs to be integrated to strengthen current smoking cessation programmes.

Other projects mainly focused and worked on at the MRC are: Child Pedestrian Safety Interventions, Childhood Burns and Policy Implications; Gender-based Violence and Homicidal Strangulation.

Supervisor: Prof. Pamela Naidoo
Study Institution: University of Western Cape
MRC Unit: Crime, Violence and Injury Research Unit