 | The 131st Annual Meeting (November 15-19, 2003) of APHA |
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| The 131st Annual Meeting (November 15-19, 2003) of APHA |
Qian Guo, MPH, Department of Preventive Medicine - Institute for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Research, University of Southern California - Keck School of Medicine, 1000 S. Fremont Avenue, Unit 8, Alhambra, CA 91803, Paula H Palmer, PhD, Keck School of Medicine - Institute for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Research, University of Southern California - Keck School of Medicine, 1000 S. Fremont Ave. , Unit 8, Alhambra, CA 91803, 626 457 4027, ppalmer@usc.edu, Chih-Ping Chou, PhD, Department of Preventive Medicine, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, 1000 S. Fremont Avenue, Unit 8, Alhambra, CA 91803, Chaoyang Li, MD, MPH, PhD, Department of Preventive Medicine and Public Health, University of Kansas Medical Center, 3901 Rainbow Blvd, Robinson Hall 4004M, MS 1008, Kansas City, KS 66106-7313, and Carl Anderson Johnson, PhD, Preventive Medicine - Institute for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Research, University of Southern California - Keck School of Medicine, 1000 South Fremont Avenue, Unit 8, Alhambra, CA 91803.
Smoking poses China’s most critical public health problem. Attrition in longitudinal smoking prevention studies may result in serious threats to internal and external validity. Identifying attrition patterns and predictors can facilitate the development of effective strategies to minimize attrition. As part of a longitudinal, school-based smoking prevention program conducted among 7th grade students in Wuhan, China, self-report questionnaires were administered at baseline and posttest. The baseline sample consisted of 2,516 boys and 2,187girls from 22 middle schools in urban (n=2,661) and rural (n=2,042) Wuhan. Subjects with baseline data who did not take the posttest were classified into subgroups: declined participation, school dropout, school transfer, absent, and other. Among 418 attrition subjects (8.91% of the total), 60.8% were dropouts, 28.7% transfer students, 9% absent, and 1.4% were other. Logistic regression analysis indicate that being a dropout, which accounted for the highest attrition, was significantly related to demographic, psychosocial, behavioral, and socioeconomic factors. The best predictors were age (OR=2.22, p<0.0001), urbanicity (OR=0.36, p<0.0001), intervention condition (OR=1.94, p<0.0001), days smoked in last 30 days (OR=1.16, p<0.0001), and GPA (OR=0.95, p<0.0001). There was a significant interaction between urbanicity and age (OR=0.58, p=0.0017). While the major reason for attrition in longitudinal, school-based programs in the U.S. is student transfer to other schools, dropping out of school was the leading cause of attrition among this Chinese sample. Attrition may be predicted by demographic and behavioral factors and may vary by age and urbanicity. These findings may be instructive to researchers conducting prevention research in Chinese schools.
Learning Objectives:
Keywords: Adolescents, International, Smoking
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.