A telephone survey on knowledge, attitude and behavior of adana city population toward the national tobacco control program, smoking and exposure to the second hand tobacco smoke

The tobacco use is one of the most important reason of morbidity, disability and mortality in Turkey and the world. Non-smokers are also exposed to hazards of tobacco smoke. In our country the National Tobacco Control Program is prepared and recommended to be put into force between the year of 2006-2010, to reduce tobacco consumption especialy to protect the younger population from harmful exposure of tobacco. There is need to collect data on smoke and conduct follow up studies to determine the trend in tobacco use and behavior, attitude and knowledge towards; second hand tobacco smoke and putting tobacco control program into practice within the national tobacco control program.In this study we investigated knowledge, attitude and behavior about smoking, second hand smoking and National Tobacco Control Program of people in Adana city toward. Telephone survey method was used to collect data. A "Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing" system which record answers simultaneously was used during the interviews. The Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing System used for sampling and collecting data was based on "TİSAMSoft" software. The study was conducted at "Telephone and Internet Research Center of Cukurova University".We completed 586 interviews. The acceptance rate was 79.7%. Mean age was 38.72±13.10. The overall smoking prevalance was 23.4% and 37.7% for male and 14.8% for female population. The length of tobacco use was as follows: 25.1% 1-10 years, 15.3% 11-20 years and 10.9% longer than 20 years. Our study showed: that 39.1% and 52.2% of non smokers were exposed to second hand tobacco smoke at home and work respectivelyOur study showed that in the field studies which were designed to conduct on a large area and to reach large number of people, the telephone interview method has advantages for cost and time.Keywords: Adana, smoking, telephone interview, exposure, prevalance.