Sample Research Proposal on Smoking Among School Children

TITLE/Name of the proposal:   Factors affecting smoking among school (9th &12th) grade in Oman: Smoking among school children 9thgrade to 12th grade in the sultanate of Oman   1-INTRODUCTION   The age of smoking initiation has dropped over the past four decades. Since behaviors and attitudes adopted in late childhood or early adolescence predicts future smoking, it is important to understand the smoking and other risk-taking behaviors and attitudes of children aged 12 and younger. There supports the idea of early identification and targeting of children at high risk of smoking in middle school, possibly as early as grade seven.   2-AIM OF THE STUDY a- There is a need to amicably evaluate such knowledge, attitude as well as behavior of school children in Oman those in 9th and 12th grade and inform them with regards to the consequences of smoking mostly affecting their health conditions; b- There is utmost goal for describing substantial affective factors associated with the presence of smoking among school children (grades 9 and 12) in Oman that can be through school and health campaigns showing the students that smoking is really dangerous to their health    3-MATERIAL AND METHODS   Material There will be usage of questionnaire, the items in the main questionnaire need to be arranged in subscales to measure the prevalence of smoking among students, and be able to evaluate students' knowledge as well as attitudes and beliefs with respect to smoking and its negative consequences. Once the final questionnaire is developed, it will be given to a panel of two experts to review such validity of content in the questionnaire. To pretest the questionnaire and check its construct validity, it must be given to 200 students (100 boys and 100 girls) with similar characteristics as core subject and to be reviewed by focus groups of school-age children and to be tested for reliability using the test-retest method in revealing revealed such correlation coefficient of approximately 0.75. Therefore, results of study could be generalized to male and female students who attended middle schools in Oman.       Settings and Subjects: There needs to have a total number of 100 boys and 100 girls attending grades 9 and 12 have to be selected at random from 15 middle schools in the city of Oman by means of using multistage cluster random sampling. Tools for Data Collection: Tool I: The utilization of survey questionnaire. This tool will reflect first hand responses of the subjects and serves as the ideal primary source of the study. This tool is effective in terms of showing statistical data outcomes for analysis and interpretation. Tool II: The one tool utilize in the study will be related to cross-sectional investigation to be conducted basing on social inoculation theory as there can be appropriate dissemination of true beliefs and attitudes of Oman students regarding smoking effects on them. This is good tool to develop health education curriculum for Oman schools to prevent risk taking behaviors for instance, frequent cigarette smoking that is true to the school-aged children. METHODS RESULTS The assumed results could be that the beliefs and attitudes of children smokers towards negative consequences attributed to smoking will be significantly different from those of non-smokers among grade levels and both sex groups. Both smokers and non-smokers can be knowledgeable about health and consequences of smoking. However, certain sense of invulnerability to the health issues will attribute to cigarette smoking and be identified among children smokers of both groups. DISCUSSION   The discussion in obtaining reliable research findings and results will be administered in back up to related literature studies and several secondary researches being done as good reference for the study. The discussion will be precise and detailed in content and explanations as required and imperative for realization of the study.         CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS True, that those 9th and 12th grade students who smoke cigarettes have different beliefs and attitudes towards smoking than those who do not smoke. Therefore, it is necessary to develop educational curricula for schools to teach students about negative effects on health when it comes to smoking during middle yet young age. Thus, such essential facet of the curricula in Oman schools should emphasize useful and effective ways to empower school children with life skills needed in overcoming strong reality of peer pressure that can greatly encourage them to smoke often as it should be. Thus, Oman schools should be encouraged to conduct regular prevalence studies, develop appropriate curricula, ban smoking on the premises and involve parents fully. Educational programs should begin by about age 8-10, with high priority for the 11-15 age groups. Programs based on education for personal growth are probably preferable to purely information giving approaches, but both can be effective if the learner is actively involved. The students should be educated that smoking cannot make them look good and grown up and feel relaxed and it cannot help them to cope with stress or solve their problems and is appropriate to focus on modifying students attitude toward smoking. Also, the banning of cigarette advertisement is useful as directly and or indirectly should take control of policy in helping discourage school children to involve in smoking.