Perceptions of health risk and smoking habit in young people

Young people are also more likely to start mocking If their friends or family are smokers. The present study Is a quantitative research with young adult smokers (at the xx Learning Centre) based on focus group discussions where a range of smoking-related topics were covered. 2. Sample The sample in this study included 6 males and 4 females, aged between 13 and 17 years, 7 smokers and 2 non-smokers. Of this group of adolescents only 2 parents are non-smokers.My aim was to maximize variation in our sample to include young men and women, smokers and non-smokers, and different age categories. My discourse analytic perspective here concentrates on talk between speakers and allows me to highlight how meanings around smoking and health are worked up. Debated and disputed in the group. Informed consent was obtained from each participant prior to the Focus group interview (Appendix A and B). The focus group took place in the â€Å"Unanimous† Learning Centre.For anonymity reasons the na me of the participants have been changed. 3. Procedure In this study we used two focus groups of five participants each. Focus groups mimic ‘natural' peer groups, so that the data will likely be authentic, rich and Informative. Focus groups have long been used In social science research, Including psychology (Crossly, 2000; Wilkinson, 2003), and can be particularly useful in identifying both diverse individual accounts and prevailing social factors which influence and constrain actions.In the context of young people and smoking, focus group research allows us to gain access to the multiplicity of perspectives presented and will also illuminate how accounts are constructed and negotiated within peer groups. Participants were given a number of prompts about their views on smoking, such as Please tell me why you believe you started smoking' and ‘Please tell me what role you believe smoking/not smoking plays in your life'. Participants were encouraged to discuss these views among themselves, with minimal input from the facilitator.The discussion, which lasted around forty minute for each group, was recorded and then transcribed verbatim. 4. Analysis Health was generally not cited as a major concern for our young people, and was not participants seemed much more concerned with the financial burden engendered by smoking. When the topic of health risks was brought up, there was a general tendency o downplay or discount these. Moreover, it was claimed that smoking could function effectively as a form of stress relief, even when the stress is engendered by exposure to smoking-related health scares, either in the media or within families.The two discursive patterns are formulated as follows: ‘ Everything is bad for you now: Contesting smoking-related health risks ‘It does make you feel better': Smoking as stress-relief 4. 1 . ‘Everything is bad for you now: Contesting smoking-related health risks Contesting smoking-related health risks ario so strategies were deployed which endured the health risks linked to smoking as exaggerated, a ploy which clearly works to rationalist and uphold current smoking – a way of misusing the self from the specter of illness and mortality.For example, other mundane practices are cited which involve risk, and life itself is presented as saturated with risk: Nicola – Mimi like to think yourself that you're not going to get cancer, I mean, they're saying that cancer is caused by all these different things 0 1 mean who's to say that smoking is definitely the worst one? † In this excerpt there is some recognition of risk but then other organogenesis are alluded to and the dedicated link between smoking and cancer is undermined (Whoso to say? ).Thus, smoking is construed as nothing special, Just one of any number of possible causes of cancer (so many things'), and therefore not worthy of disproportionate attention. E. Generalizes the notion of risk – ‘everything is bad for you now – so that living per SE becomes inured with risk, something that affects ‘everyone'. Note the extreme case formulations which litter this extract: ‘ all these different things'; ‘So, smoking is part of life and is practiced with care. Facilitator: So, are health concerns an issue? Simon: Well, yeah.Not really, I suppose, because sometimes you feel like crap because your lungs are hurting, because you've been caning it all weekend, but you think, well you might give up smoking, give up drinking, give up anything – and then get knocked down by a bus, but 0 if you're going to stop everything that you enjoy, well what's the point of living forever? You know what I mean? Aaron: But don't you, sometimes you Just think Well, what's the point of it? You're Just breathing in horrible smoke into your body Simon: It's like what's the point of drinking? It's fun!The health risks of smoking are conceded, with reference to current, minor symptom s. However, smoking is likened to other pleasurable activities (e. G. ‘drinking') and anything/'everything you enjoy so that living is defined in terms of enjoyment over risk, the emphasis is on fun' and not denying oneself gratification – even if it means a shorter life-span or inhaling ‘horrible smoke'. Bob: A guy, a guy I went to school with was cross country champion for our county, and he used to smoke like twenty a day [laughs] He used to smoke loads of weed and that, and he used to run for ages [laughs] (.You see someone like that, it's Just like, whoa! So, citing cases, where smoking has not impeded sporting performance, undermines claims about the deleterious health consequences of smoking and helps Justify continued smoking. The case of the cross-country champion cited by Bob is also interesting because impressive, and further contesting the connection between smoking and not being healthy. Lucas I knew somebody who used to smoke ten a day when they were about eighty-odd and have a glass of brandy every day 0 and when they got put in a nursing home they took it all off her and within weeks she were dead.Tara: It's like alcoholics, isn't it? If alcoholics stopped drinking they do seem to die. In this extract, the dangers of stopping smoking are emphasizes, thereby inverting the ‘normalizing about taking up or continuing smoking. Facilitator: What are the health worries you might have about smoking? Bob: Cancer David: None, ‘coos I know a guy that lived until he was 23 and Just dropped dead. He didn't smoke and didn't drink. You know, the way I see it, you only live once – you might as well do it, haven't you.Here Bobby's immediate response concerning health fears is not taken up as the others proceed to reject this pre-occupation. David immediately invokes the case of a non-smoker who died suddenly as a means of challenging the link between smoking and ill-health. The randomness of life then becomes a key theme, w hich again works to rationalist current smoking. As one participant put it: ‘it Just shows that you're having a good time, you know, drinking and having a cigarette, and it Just kind of ties in together' (Kate).Here, smoking (and drinking) is inextricably tied to enjoyment, an automatic indicator of ‘good times'. 4. 2. ‘It does make you feel better': Smoking as stress-relief A very predominant theme cross all discussions was the benefits of smoking in terms of stress relief, arising from various sources: Tara: It does make you feel better when you've been sat there and you've Just been in class, and you Just think ‘Oh, I'm going to go for a bag, and you go down and you have it, it does give you some kind of buzz, because it does definitely chill you out a bit, doesn't it.Rachel: It gives me a couple of minutes and just chills me out, like if something that had upset me, like my family, Vie been thrown out of my house and that's the reason why I started smokin g a lot more because of more stress and stuff. I do think that having a cigarette makes me relax a bit. Tara: At the moment I don't want to [stop smoking] because I do see smoking as helping me chill out a bit – I mean, if I didn't I'd be a tiger! Rachel: Vie actually been told by my doctor not to stop smoking – he says its got anger management, it calms me down.Both participants point to the grim consequences of not smoking I. E. Uncontaminated irritability. Earache's claim is warranted with reference to an authoritative source (a medic), which is culturally garnished with expertise. Rachel: Yes, that's the reason I first started smoking again, because I'd stopped smoking for so Eng and my dad gave up smoking, and my dad's been smoking since he was twelve, and he stopped for six month and then he had a heart attack.You would expect that to make me think ‘Right, need to stop smoking, or whatever, but straight away I went ‘Mum, give us a bag, because I hones tly didn't know what to do and I needed something to concentrate on – it gives you something to think about other than what's going on around you. In summary, smoking is popularly constructed as a positive resource in times of stress, whether provoked by , arguments with friends and family, school, and paradoxically , exposure to smoking-related disease within families. 5.Conclusions smokers since, from the focus groups shows that smoking is understood as a rational choice (rather than, say, addiction) conferring benefits (stress relief, enjoyment). This finding is in line with other research on ‘alternative rationalities' (Crossly, 2000) with adult smokers. However we should take in consideration that the qualitative research literature on smoking deploys a range of methods while in this study we analyze the young people smoking practices within a social (focus group) context.Smoking is explicitly linked to pleasure and relaxation (often tied to drinking contexts †“ see also Johnson et al. , 2000). Our participants also link other lifestyle practices to risk and they see life itself as a risk where preoccupation with smoking-related or any other problems is deemed excessive and paralyzing. To some extent, it is fair to say that our sample construed risky smoking as necessary to cope with their family/friends/ environment pressure. Overall our analysis points to the various ways in which the young smokers skillfully deflect the concerns of a health-conscious culture.It gaslights how, in a period of increasing pressure on smokers to quit, the young people in our focus group have created a series of complex and creative accounts to defend and preserve what is clearly perceived as an important social practice. Surely our young smokers are expressing ‘unrealistic optimism' (Weinstein, 1984), that is ‘inaccurate' perceptions of risk and susceptibility in relation to smoking and illness. For example some participants claimed that major health problems have not yet appeared (e. G. Current health is emphasizes) and that illness can be avoided by individual action (I. E. Tinting smoking in the near future). By contrast, psychosocial research, which conceptualizes smokers' talk, helps us to appreciate how smoking is rationalized within relevant social groups (in this case young adults in educational settings), as well as highlighting the creativity and sophistication of lay accounts. In turn, attention to the grounded discourse of smokers may well help inform more effective health promotion interventions (Crossly, 2000). To build on the current analysis, future work could include ‘street' interviews with young smokers in the public places where smoking is popularly practiced (e. Designated smoking areas at university, in pubs). This ‘live' context might prove especially illuminating in terms of the discourses reproduced with respect to how smoking is defended while people are engaged in the act of smoking . As well, it would be informative to examine patterns of naturally occurring conversation between young adult smokers where they gather. Such research would complement our focus group study by determining when and how health is introduced as a concern by younger people themselves and examining how such concerns are negotiated.