FAMILIAL PREDICTORS OF SMOKING IN ADOLESCENTS; A COMPARISON OF SMOKERS AND NON-SMOKERS

Adolescence stage is filled with enormous changes and challenges. At this stage, adolescents are not mentally mature so they failed to adjust to the changes of their life and are at greater risk of developing smoking habit. Many psychosocial factors contribute to adolescents' smoking, among them family role is prominent. So, the present correlational study aimed to highlight the familial predictors of smoking in adolescents. It was hypothesized that parenting styles, lack of parent-child communication, less parental monitoring, parents and sibling smoking would be related to adolescents smoking. Data was collected from 150 adolescents (smokers: 70, non-smokers: 80) throughconvenient sampling technique. Parental bonding instrument and parental monitoring questionnaire were used. Binary Logistic regression revealed less Parental care and father's monitoring, lack of mother-child communication and siblings' smoking as significant predictors of smoking. The study implications are discussed with its application in health, social and counseling psychology.