Smoking Behaviors of Street Children in Makassar 2013

Street children are vulnerable groups of risky behavior like smoking behavior. This study aims to describe smoking and relation with education, living with parents, family, peer influence, and religiosity. Study design was cross sectional study. The population was 990 street children with the sample of 277 street children. Sample selection in accidental sampling with criteria of respondents aged 10-19 years and Muslims. Data were analyzed with chi square test with confidence interval of 95% (α=0.05). Results show that 48% of street children have ever smoked and 37.2% of street children were still smoking in the last 30 days. Then, there is a relationship between living with parents (p=0.002) and levels of religiosity (p=0.023). However, there was no relationship with school status (p=0613), family history (p=0.874), and peer influence (p=0.157) with the smoking behavior of street children. This research suggests to give education about the dangers of smoking, provide religious values for them and involve them in religious social activities, family empowerment approach to parents to guide their children not to smoke, and optimize function of NGOs or shelters for street children