BACKGROUND: School tobacco policy (STP) is an alternative promising strategy for schools to become smoke-free. However, evidence on their effectiveness to prevent adolescent smoking is still lacking, mainly because of poor implementation. Qualitative research suggest that both students and staff perceive these policies as a further restriction to their autonomy and staff is reluctant to enforce them. This study aims to evaluate both actors’ opinion about the acceptability and feasibility of STPs at school.
METHODS: This study is part of the ADHAIRE trial (NCT06655038). We collected and analyzed data from the ADHAirE study, Belgium. Students (n = 3064) and staff members (n = 610) from 18 secondary schools reported to what extend their school did enough against smoking (too much, enough, not enough) and other socio-demographic and tobacco-related statements. We used chi-squared to evaluate the concordance between staff' and students' opinion of their school STP and logistic regression models to assess potential explanatory factors of this opinion.
RESULTS: 42% of the students (vs. 47% of the staff members) found that their school did not do enough to prevent smoking, whereas 8.8% (vs. 1.2%) found that their school did too much to prevent smoking (students vs. staff Chi-squared: p<0.0001). Smoking status (never smoker, p<0.0001), gender (female, p<0.01)) and high visibility of smoking on school premises or at the school gate (p<0.01) were associated to reporting that more STP enforcement was needed.
CONCLUSIONS: Unlike previous qualitative data, our results show that a large proportion of the school community supports better implementation of STPs to prevent smoking. However, there is a difference between staff and students on that matter. Supporting an advocacy coalition on that topic could enhance implementation of STPs.