1. Objectifs

Intentions :
«This study aims to: (i) explore the relations between smoking initiation and different profiles of academic achievement trajectories in early to mid-adolescence; and (ii) to investigate whether background characteristics (gender, ethnicity, grade repetition, parental education) and proximal processes (parental practices, extra-curricular involvement) predicted class membership and smoking initiation.» (p. 819)

2. Méthode

Échantillon/Matériau :
«Participants were 741 non-smoking secondary school adolescents (54% male), aged 12 [standard deviation (SD) = 0.56] at 7th-grade baseline, taking part in the Montreal Adolescent Depression Development Project (MADDP).» (p. 819)

Instruments :
Questionnaire

Type de traitement des données :
Analyse statistique

3. Résumé

«Three academic achievement trajectories were identified and found to differ significantly in rates of smoking initiation: persistently high achievers (7.1% smoking), average achievers (15.1% smokers) and unstable low achievers (49.1% smoking). Further, results showed that general parenting practices and parental education indirectly reduced the likelihood of smoking by reducing the risk of membership in classes with lower GPA. [...] Adolescents who do well in school are less likely to smoke and it may be cost-effective for smoking prevention to focus on the few (12%) easy to identify unstable low achievers who form 35% of smoking onsets. In addition, as parental support and democratic control reduced the likelihood of poor academic performance, promoting essential generic parenting skills from a young age may also prevent future onsets of smoking in adolescence.» (p. 819)