European Respiratory Journal | 2019
Parental knowledge, attitude and practice on children’s environmental tobacco smoke exposure in Hong Kong
Abstract
Background: Understanding parents’ knowledge, attitude and practice (KAP) relating children’s environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) exposure helps to provide us information to improve the exposure reduction interventions. Methods: This is an on-going study. Our self-administered KAP questionnaire which was panel revised and pilot studied, was distributed to smoking parent randomly recruited from the paediatric department at the Prince of Wales Hospital. The six-page questionnaire was scored on 60 items, and higher scores indicated more favourable KAP. The response to the KAP questionnaire was studied by descriptive analysis, chi-squared tests and regressions to explore the associations. Results: 138 smoking parents (mean age: 37.7±7.3 yrs.; male: 84.8%) were included in this preliminary analysis. Less than half (40.5%) of the participants reported that they had “smoke-free policy” at home. Among those smoking parents (29.0% of all the participants) who had private cars, less than half (42.5%) of them had “smoke-free policy” in the car. Only 29.5% of the participants correctly answered ≥70% of the knowledge questions. And only 20% of the participants gave favourableresponses to≥70% of the attitude questions. The total knowledge score and the total attitudes score was positively associated (r=0.49, 95% CI: 0.35-0.79, p Conclusions: The KAP regarding children’s ETS exposure need to be improved among smoking parents of paediatric patients in Hong Kong. Interventions should be developed and carried out to translate better knowledge and attitudes into more protective practice.