Smoking Survey

I. Introduction

Smoking is a serious problem in most countries. Smoking affects the smoker in social, health and economic terms. Smoking also affects the environment. In social terms, people will stay away from smokers because of the bad smell of smoking. In health terms, smoking causes many diseases like bronchitis, emphysema, larynx cancer, and pancreatic cancer (Seal, 1998). In economic terms, smokers will spend more money on cigarettes, so they will have low income and smokers will have trouble with money in the future. Nowadays both men and women are smoking; “about 35 percent of adult men and 25 percent of adult women in the United States smoke cigarettes” (Seal, 1998). People start smoking, often when they are adolescents, for different reasons; some smokers smoke because their parents smoke, and some of them smoke because they have stress in their life. It is difficult for smokers to quit smoking after they start to smoke. “People become psychologically dependent on smoking as a way of reducing anxiety and coping with different situations. Because of these physiological and psychological forces, quitting is difficult and the relapse rate is high” (Seal, 1998, P-31).

II. Purpose
We did this survey about smokers for both smokers and non-smokers. For smokers, we did it to know why they smoke, where they smoke, with whom they smoke, who smokes more, males or females, and what the best way to quit is. For non-smokers, we wanted to know what they think about smokers and why they start smoking.

III. Hypothesis

I thought males would say that they smoked more than females because females cared about their lives more than males. I thought half of males would be smokers.

IV. Materials

In our survey we asked eight questions, three questions for both smokers and non-smokers. Two questions were for smokers and one question was for non-smoker people, so we could cover all types of people. The types of questions were yes/no questions and multiple-choice questions.

V. Methods

We asked 43 different people from different places around SIUC like Faner building, the library and the student center. We went outside and we asked anyone. We asked males and females of different ages and from different countries. We asked both smokers and non-smokers to get different answers. We gave the survey and waited until they filled it out to have the result at the same time. I think we have a good survey about smokers, because we asked different people in different places and the people were very kind to do the survey.

VI. Data

See Appendix A

VII. Results

According to our survey, 78.9% of smokers are males and 21.1% of females are smokers, so males are smoking more than females. 75% of smokers are smoking equally both alone and with people, and 12.5%, said they smoked mostly alone or mostly with people. 66.7% of smokers smoke both in public and private, and 25% of smokers smoke in private only, and 8.3% of smokers smoke in public only. 42.9% can equal percentage, of smokers smoke because they have too much stress, and because they have friends who smoke. 9.5% of smokers smoke because they have exams, and 4.8% of smokers smoke because they have a family member who smokes. 29.5% of non-smokers think that the smokers start smoking because they have friends who smoke, and 25% of smokers smoke because they have too much stress, and 13.6% of smokers smoke because they think cigarettes are tasty, and an equal percentage of 11.4% of smokers smoke because their friends pressured them to smoke.

VIII. Conclusion & Discussion

According to the result, my hypothesis was right that more males are smoking more often than females. I don’t think that our survey was perfect because we asked only 43 people, which is not enough for an excellent survey. In my opinion, the best way to have more people is to put the survey online. Next survey I would like to concentrate on only smokers to have specific information to learn a lot about why smokers smoke and what is the best way to quit smoking.
IX. References
Seal, B. (1998). Smoking. In Academic Encounters: Human behavior. pp. 31–33. New York:
Cambridge University Press.