Gender Relation Towards Attitude Overview's Pharmacy Students About Smoking Impacts

The title of the research is "Gender Relation Towards Attitude Overview's Pharmacy Students about Smoking Impacts". This is a research conducted by a team composed of ISMAFARSI students and KSM Eka Prasetya UI members. 

Wayne McLaren, the Marlboro Man, before he died at 51 years old, after a long struggle of lung cancer, he said to his mother, "Tobacco will kill you, and I am living proof of it". As the pharmacist, we really know about the smoking impacts, such as Larynx cancer, esophagus cancer, etc which is mention in the picture below. 

Indonesia was ranked as the third in the world as the highest number of smokers after India and China. From the total Indonesian population, 67.5% were the male smokers, 4.5% were the female smokers, while the rest were the nonsmokers. 

Other than that, 168 countries had signed the FCTC (Framework Convention on Tobacco Control), yet only Indonesia is neither the signatory nor the party of the FCTC. 

Health professionals have a prominent role to play in tobacco control, including pharmacist. Most of pharmacists are female. This phenomenon raises a question, do the pharmacists that is mostly female have a high concern on tobacco control? Instead of the most smokers in Indonesia are male not female.  

While there is a research found that gender is able to affect attitude. Another research found that attitude can affect the effectiveness of certain programs. So, the objective of the research was to find out about the relation of the gender towards attitude overview for pharmacy students about smoking impact. 

The study was using quantitative approach which the strategy used was a survey method with the cross-sectional type. The population of this research was the pharmacy students at Universitas Indonesia in 2014. Thirty pharmacy students were divided into two groups, the first group composed of 21 female students and the second group composed of 9 male students. 

The sampling technique was non-random sampling with the accidental sampling technique. The quantitative data was obtained from online questionnaires. The questionnaires contained 76 statements that comprised of 21 cognitive, 31 affection, and 24 behavior dimension statements. Deep interview with pharmacy students were also done to support the quantitative data. 

Saphiro-Wilk normality test and nonparametic statistical test approach (Mann-Whitney test) were used to explore the normality and to discover whether there is an attitude overview difference between female and male pharmacy students or not. 

The null hypothesis was there is no relation between female and male pharmacy students toward attitude overview about smoking impacts. While the alternative hypothesis was there is a relation between female and male pharmacy students toward attitude overview about smoking impact. The level of significance used was 5% or 0.05.

The attitude overview wa measured by calcualating each dimension separately. Every dimension was measured using likert scale which contains four categories: strongly agree, agree, disagree, and strongly disagree. Then, the total scores were divided by 5 so it would be resulting 5 ranges. 

The result was firstly, on the cognitive dimension, it was shown the p value (level of significance value) was 0.859 which is more than 0.05. Then, it's concluded that there is no relation between gender and attitude overview's pharmacy student on cognitive dimension. Cognitive dimension according to Greenberg and Baron (1997) is the component of attitude variable refers to intelligence elements (intellectual) to find out an object, that is to know how far an individual knows some things correlated to the object. This research found out that female and male pharmacy students have the same cognitive dimension about smoking impacts. Both have the same level of knowledge that smoking can cause several diseases. Since both has already studied about it in the same college, the same subject, and at the same time. 

Secondly, on the affection dimension, the p value was 0.114 which is still more than 0.05 so we can conclude that there is no relation. Affection dimension is the component of attitude variable which gives evaluation to assess an object about feeling or emotions. This research found out that female and male pharmacy students have the same affection about smoking impacts. Both have same feelings that both are upset if there is someone smokes in the public area or there is smokers from their friends or relatives according to the data obtained through the questionnaires assessment. 

Thirdly, on the behavior dimension, the result showed that the p value was 0.04 which is less than 0.05 so we can conclude that there is relation between gender and attitude overview's pharmacy student about smoking impacts. Behavior dimension is the component of attitude variable which refers on how individual defines actions/behaviors towards an objects that individual knows or feels. This research found out that male pharmacy student have lower tendency to behave on smoking impacts. It may be caused by the higher tendency of male students to try smoking. This thought was also supported by male pharmacy student while having the deep interview.

"I often hear that there is smoker among pharmacy student. He becomes smoker because of his environment".

Hence, the conclusion was there is no relation between gender and attitude overview's pharmacy student about smoking impacts on cognitive and affection dimension. Nevertheless, there is relation between the gender and attitude overview's pharmacy student about smoking impacts on behavior dimension. This research result can be useful for the government to make the strategy how to involve pharmacist on tobacco control regarding to the gender. 

That's all. Thanks for reading the post. I'm sorry if there are any mistakes. For full text about the research, you can contact me by filling the comments below.