Prevalence of Smoking and Related Risk Factors among Physical Education and Sports School Students at Istanbul University

The purpose of this study was to evaluate smoking prevalence and factors associated with smoking among students at the Physical Education and Sports School of Istanbul University. A cross-sectional study was performed on total of 373 students who have been continuing their education at the school from February to March 2011. A total of 166 responders were male (44.5%) and 207 responders were female (55.5%) out of 373 participants. Of the 373 students, 94 (25.2%) were current smokers and the average age for beginning smoking was 18.03 ± 2.6 (min: 12–max: 30). In this study, we found that the smoking prevalence associated with some variables such as age place of residence, mother’s education, father’s education, cigarette or tobacco use in the living place, knowledge status of students about their teacher’s smoking habits and alcohol consumption (p ≤ 0.05). These findings suggest that the students, who will train the sportspeople of the future, and should be considered a role model of healthy behavior in society. Consequently, we believe that sports school students should take an active role in providing health education programs to increase their awareness about the detrimental effects of smoking and to extensively quit smoking in public.