Identifying Infants at High-Risk for Second-Hand Smoke Exposure

Identifying Infants at High-Risk for Second-Hand Smoke Exposure

Introduction

Research Problem

The research problem was to find out whether the smoking behavior of women is determined by children. Furthermore, the research endeavors to examine whether the number of children a parent has and their age will determine their smoking behavior. This builds a persuasive argument since children are exposed to smoking at home. A pregnant mother is likely to leave smoking during pregnancy, but they are likely to resort to the behavior after delivery. This, therefore, builds a persuasive study worth of investigation. Furthermore, parents with school-going children are likely to smoke without restriction, unlike parents with children below the age of five years (Hawkins & Berkman, 2014). The problem statement is easy to locate since the introduction is smaller. The second paragraph of the introduction is the problem statement for the research.

Research Question and Hypothesis

The research question for the study was to examine the social determinant that predisposes infants to smoke and whether the factors will be influenced by the smoking status of the mother and the number of children that they have (Hawkins & Berkman, 2014).  The research does not have a hypothesis.

Methods

Ethical Aspects of the Study

This study was reviewed by the Harvard School of Public Health   Institutional Review Board and was given the go-ahead to conduct the research.  There was the authorization of the data from the participant’s since the information was collected from a public organization, the Pregnancy Assessment Monitoring System (PRAMS) (Hawkins & Berkman, 2014).  However, as PRAMS collects the information, they include an informed consent document that is within the survey packet. Therefore, the participants will only answer the questions at their own volition.

Research Design

The study was non-experimental since there was no manipulation of the in depend variables at all. This research could not be able to control, alter, or manipulate the predictor variable. Still, they relied on the interpretation, observation, and interpretation so that they could come up with a conclusion.

The study design was cross-sectional. This was because the information was collected for a limited period d of time and involved the evolution of many variables at the same time (Hawkins & Berkman, 2014).   this is one of the benefits of cross-sectional research where the researchers can compare different variables in the study. Additionally, cross-sectional studies often concentrate on the characteristics in a given population and therefore provide information on what is happening in the given information.

The internal validity of the research may be affected by the fact that the exposure and the outcome are assessing simultaneously.  In this case, childbearing, smoking habits, and child exposure to smoke are evaluated at the same time. Therefore it is hard to know with certainty whether the disclosure of infants to smoke was a result of the smoking habit and the number of children other factors may have contributed to the phenomena (Hawkins & Berkman, 2014). This study is likely to be affected by confounding effects where other factors may come to play and manipulate the behavior of the parents hence altering the outcome.

Sampling Design

             The sampling technique that was used in this study was convenience sampling, where the researchers readily available data of a part of a population. That took part in data of PRAMS between the years 2000 and 2003. PRAMS provides data for mothers in 28 states (Hawkins & Berkman, 2014).

There seems to be no biases in the sampling where because the inclusion criteria were, lack of information on exposure of intact to smoke, the number of children a parent had, the smoking status of the mother, race and ethnicity, the age of the mother, education, marital status, WIC status of any sampling stratum that had less than five participants (Hawkins & Berkman, 2014).  This criterion was appropriate for this research as it addressed the factors that were relevant for the study.

Data Collection

the data was collected from a secondary source. The researchers analyzed data that had been collected by PRAMS in 28 states in the united states. PRAMS collected their data through self-report, where they send questions to the participants to complete. The respond gives answers to the question that are asked and send the questionnaires back. Additionally, there is also the use of telephone to interview the response (Hawkins & Berkman, 2014). The research has clearly outlined the elements that were included while asking the questions.

Result

 Statistical Analysis

statistical analysis was done using STATA computation software version 12.0 SE. The analysis weights were included in the computation. The first analysis was done to establish whether the exposure of infants to smoke varied by the number of children d separately by the smoking of the mothers and the number of children they had.  This relationship was tested by the use of Pearson’s chi-square test (Hawkins & Berkman, 2014). The second test was to determine whether the exposure of infants to smoke and the number of children varies separately by the smoking habits of the mothers. This relationship was evaluated by the use of an adjusted Wald test. It was found that this relation by the Wald test was significant, and the analysis was, therefore, stratified (Hawkins & Berkman, 2014). Finally, the use of logistic regression that had been mutually adjusted was used to establish the relationship between the exposure of the infant to smoke and the social demographic status that were separated by maternal smoking. The social demographic status that was evaluated in this model includes the number of siblings in a household, the race pf the moth or her ethnicity, her education, age, the status of WIC, and their marital status.

The results established that 9,9 % of the mother notes that their children were exposed to smoking in the house for up to 3.3 hours.in the house where mothers smoke and had one child, the child had a 25% chance of being exposed to smoke. Where a mother had two children, the likelihood of the infant being exposed to second-hand smoking was at 59%. Furthermore, the blacks, Hispanic, and mothers of other races were more likely to expose their children to second smoking for more than one hour than their white counterparts.  Mothers who had attained at least a college diploma of those who were 25 years or older were likely to report less of exposure of the infant to second-hand smoking. Mothers out of the wedlock or those who were in the WIC program, are likely to have their infants exposed to second-hand smoking for more than one hour (Hawkins & Berkman, 2014). The number of hours that infants were exposed to smoke seemed to increase with the increases in the number of children.  For example, the means number of hours for exposure for mothers with one child was 3.8 hrs. This reduced to 4.7 for mothers with two siblings and 4.6 for parents who had more than two children.  In a family where the mother did not smoke, infants who had other siblings were more lily to be exposed to second-hand smoking than the infant without siblings (Cheng, Chiang & Chiang, 2017).

References

Cheng, K. W., Chiang, W. L., & Chiang, T. L. (2017). In utero and early childhood exposure to second-hand smoke in Taiwan: a population-based birth cohort study. BMJ Open, 7(6), e014016. http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2016-014016

Hawkins, S. S., & Berkman, L. (2014). Identifying infants at high‐risk for second-hand smoke exposure. Child: care, health, and development, 40(3), 441-445. https://doi.org/10.1111/cch.12058