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Smoking and tobacco
Research
Limited potential of school textbooks to prevent tobacco use among students grade 1–9 across multiple developing countries: a content analysis study
  1. Junko Saito1,
  2. Daisuke Nonaka2,
  3. Tetsuya Mizoue3,
  4. Jun Kobayashi4,5,
  5. Achini C Jayatilleke1,
  6. Sabina Shrestha1,
  7. Kimiyo Kikuchi1,
  8. Syed E Haque6,
  9. Siyan Yi7,
  10. Irene Ayi8,
  11. Masamine Jimba1
  1. 1Department of Community and Global Health, Graduate School of Medicine, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan
  2. 2Department of Parasitology and International Health, Graduate School of Medicine, University of the Ryukyus, Okinawa, Japan
  3. 3Department of Epidemiology and Prevention, Clinical Research Center, National Center for Global Health and Medicine, Tokyo, Japan
  4. 4Graduate School of International Health Development, Nagasaki University, Nagasaki, Japan
  5. 5Department of International Medical Cooperation, National Center for Global Health and Medicine, Tokyo, Japan
  6. 6UChicago Research Bangladesh Ltd, Dhaka, Bangladesh
  7. 7The Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, Freeman Spogli Institute of International Studies, Stanford University, Stanford, USA
  8. 8Parasitology Department, Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research, University of Ghana. Legon, Accra, Ghana
  1. Correspondence to Dr Daisuke Nonaka; laodaisuke{at}hotmail.co.jp

Abstract

Objective To evaluate the content of school textbooks as a tool to prevent tobacco use in developing countries.

Design Content analysis was used to evaluate if the textbooks incorporated the following five core components recommended by the WHO: (1) consequences of tobacco use; (2) social norms; (3) reasons to use tobacco; (4) social influences and (5) resistance and life skills.

Setting Nine developing countries: Bangladesh, Cambodia, Laos, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Benin, Ghana, Niger and Zambia.

Textbooks analysed Of 474 textbooks for primary and junior secondary schools in nine developing countries, 41 were selected which contained descriptions about tobacco use prevention.

Results Of the 41 textbooks, the consequences of tobacco use component was covered in 30 textbooks (73.2%) and the social norms component was covered in 19 (46.3%). The other three components were described in less than 20% of the textbooks.

Conclusions A rather limited number of school textbooks in developing countries contained descriptions of prevention of tobacco use, but they did not fully cover the core components for tobacco use prevention. The chance of tobacco prevention education should be seized by improving the content of school textbooks.

  • Prevention
  • Education & Training (see Medical Education & Training)
  • Public Health

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial License, which permits use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non commercial and is otherwise in compliance with the license. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/ and http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/legalcode

https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2012-002340

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