Association of various components of media literacy and adolescent smoking.

Department of Medicine, University of Pittsburgh School fo Medicine, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA. bprimack@pitt.edu

OBJECTIVE: To determine which specific aspects of media literacy were most strongly associated with smoking outcomes. METHODS: Students at a public high school responded to cross-sectional survey items measuring smoking outcomes, components of media literacy, and other variables. RESULTS: Of the 1211 participants, 19% were current smokers (N = 216) and 40% of the nonsmokers (N = 342) were susceptible to smoking. In the adjusted models, current smoking was most strongly related to representation-reality domain items, but susceptibility to smoking was associated with each of the media literacy domains. CONCLUSION: Varied relationships exist between individual facets of media literacy and smoking outcomes.

PMID: 18844513 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]