Smoking cessation tendency of university students and the relationship between subjective well-being, depression and locus of control

Although it's known that smoking causes addiction and unfavorable medical outcomes cigarette smoking is greatly widespread all over the world. Therefore, it is important to investigate the components that are related to smoking habit and the ways to help give up smoking. The aim of this research is surveying smoking habit and smoking quitting tendency of university students and the relationship between these and subjective well-being, depression and locus of control. For this purpose, after ethical committee approval, a total of 232 university student consisting of four groups as smokers who have not tried to quit smoking, smokers who have tried to quit smoking, ex-smokers and non-smokers. Participants filled the demographical form and smoking questionnaire developed by researcher, and Subjective Well-Being Scale, Rotter's Locus of Control Scale and Beck Depression Inventory. The data were analyzed by using One Way ANOVA and Pearson Correlation Analysis. The non-smokers group (participants who have never smoked) showed significantly higher subjective well-being scores and significantly lower depression scores. Locus of control scores based on smoking habit did not revealed any significant results. There was a significant downhill relationship between depression and subjective well-being scores.