Mini Survey

I. Introduction

The smoking problem has been treated as a big issue from many years ago. According to Seal, smoking has caused many diseases such as bronchitis, emphysema, larynx cancer, and pancreatic cancer (1998). Especially, an adolescent smoking is more dangerous than an adult smoking. Moreover, the example of parents and pressure from peers can be reasons for adolescents smoking. Actually, the rate of smoking went up very fast, so cigarettes companies started to produce cigarettes with warnings, and the media also tried to give knowledge about how dangerous cigarettes were. For these reasons, the rate of smoking has gone down.

II. Purpose

Our EAP 1 WW class wanted to find out about basic knowledge about smoking. First we wanted to know male’s smoking rates and female’s smoking rates. Next, we wanted to know about smoker’s smoking behavior and know whether they are addicted or not. Third, we wanted to know from smokers about why they started smoking and we wanted to know from non-smokers about why they thought people started smoking. Finally, we wanted to know about the best way to quit.

III. Hypothesis

I believed male’s smoking rate might be higher than female’s smoking rate, because I saw most smokers were male in front of Faner Hall. Also I believed that they didn’t care about smoking alone or smoking with others, but I think they will smoke in private, because most non-smokers don’t like them to smoke in public. Also I thought they might start smoking due to influence of parents. I believed a program of training was the best way to quit, because it might be hard to quit without other’s help. Actually, I saw many people fail to quit smoking.

IV. Materials

Our survey paper is formed of alternative question of male or female and smokers or not, and we also have multiple choice questions about smoking behavior, reasons for starting, and best way to quit.

V. Methods

We asked forty-three people in Faner Hall and outside of Faner hall. These people were mostly CESL students. Although they were not my friends, I just asked them. I did the survey in the last week during free time. When I did it, I met each person and waited for them to finish filling it out. After the survey we collected survey papers and made statistics of smoking. Even though it is not a survey that many people are participating, it might be pretty similar to whole American's result.

VI. Data

See appendix A Appendix A

VII. Results.

According to the appendix, 78.9% of smokers were male, while 21.9% of the smokers were female. They usually didn’t care about the places, whether private or public. 66% of smokers responded that they smoked in both places. A small percentage of smokers responded they just smoked alone. 75% of smokers smoke whether they are alone or not. Moreover, 37.5% of smokers answered that they are addicted. Smokers started to smoke due to influence of friends smoking (42.9%) and stress (42.9%). It shows a similar rate to non-smoker’s response. They also thought both of those were the biggest reasons people started smoking. Both, smoker and non-smoker, responded that program of training is the best way to quit smoking (39.5%).

VIII. Conclusions and Discussion

My hypothesis and survey results seem similar with respect to smoking rates, smoking behavior, reason for starting smoking, and best way to quit smoking, but not smoking places. I was really surprised at that result. According to the result, most smokers didn’t care about the place. Even though we just surveyed around Faner Hall, the results were not much different from all of U.S smoker’s survey result.

IX. Reference

Seal, B. (1988). Smoking. In Academic Encounter: Human behavior. Pp.31-31. NewYork: Cambridge University Press