Key Objectives of the Research

Question:

How does Smoking Habit Impacts on Students in Social Science in University of Wollongong?

The proposed research includes an investigation about the use of smoking habits of students in social science and its impact on them. The integration of scientific evidences signifying that cigarette smoking as severe health hazard and especially, it becomes the major cause of lung cancer. It could lead to an increased sense of responsibility among the individuals and organizations concerned with public health to observe that young and adult students are aware of such hazard. Several studies have conducted on the cause of increasing smoking habit but hardly a number of studies have particularly focused on the impact of such deadly habit on the students and this is where the proposed study holds significance of conducting an investigation on this context. In this context, Johnston et al. (2016) commented that tobacco proves to be the most significant preventable cause of premature death in several nations. Moreover, a half of the smokers who initiated smoking in adolescence could die from the persistent use of tobacco. The proposed study will examine the impact of smoking habits particularly of the students of Wollongong. This research report provides the detail of study and investigation in terms of the major areas, techniques, resources and other relevant aspects. The purpose of the research is to examine the impact of increasing smoking habits on university students.

The aim of the research is to investigate the impact of smoking habits on the students in social science of the University of Wollongong. In addition, the research also identifies the major causes behind the increasing smoking habit. The following are the key objectives of the research that will help to shape the research needs and contribute to the actions of gaining the desired outcomes.

• To critically investigate the causes of increasing smoking habits of the students of University of Wollongong
• To analyze the impact of smoking habits on the students in social science of University of Wollongong
• To develop a suitable solution to reduce the impact on the students

• What are the causes of smoking of the students in social science of University of Wollongong?
• What is the impact of increasing smoking habit of students of University of Wollongong?

The university life is a significant phase for every student at that time; they grow and engage in the risky behavior such as smoking. Therefore, it is found that smoking always remains as a public health issue among the students of the University. An international study conducted by Doran et al. (2013), demonstrated almost 34% of male university students as well as 27% of female university students from 24 different nations were the existing smokers with the large difference between nations and genders.

As put forward by Maziak (2011), the individual personality factors, cognitive factors as well as coping resources could play a significant role in determining particularly, which college students grow the tendency to start and continue to smoke. In this context, Musmar (2012) also mentioned that personality factors as stable as well as distinctive traits of a person could account for variability in health perceptions. On the other side, Koura, Al-Dossary and Bahnassy (2011) mentioned that personality factors might engage neuroticism, extraversion, frankness and agreeableness. A study performed by Doran et al. (2013), demonstrate that neuroticism is related with the smoking cost onset in young students. Based on the previous studies, it can be mentioned that social smoking has rapidly become prevalent and it could through a challenge to the conventional cessation practices.

Causes of Increasing Smoking Habits Among University Students

It has also been identified that social smoking remains as the subset of irregular smoking behavior, which is usually described as smoking in the social context. Self-efficacy remains as a well-known factor to influence health behaviors. A self-efficacy theory developed by Bandura indicates that behavior is usually anticipated by an individual’s confidence in their ability capability to achieve a provided task. Furthermore, the recent studies on the enhancement of medical education in different nations have persistently demonstrated that undergraduate training in this particular area remains inadequate. Moreover, a surprising facts is that effectively developed educational interventions to enhance knowledge skills and attitudes of students about the treatment of smokers remain available but the factor of higher cost in respect with resource and teaching time restrict the implementation of such program.

Maziak (2011) mentioned that one single lecture on the topic could be sufficient to blend the interest of university students extracting self-directed learning activities about the tobacco toxicology and treatment alternatives. Therefore, a high quality of research is widely required in this particular area. Going forward, Bachman et al. (2013) reported that university students attending the final year of undergraduate students have poor knowledge regarding the use of tobacco dependency, smoking related pathology as well as the role of physicians in the action of smoking prohibition. Thereby, it can be mentioned that while the findings itself are the factors for concern, the interpretation of such interpretation could be further developed by contrasting them to survey results gained from the students.

Even though, the social studies have found new ways to make the students and adults aware of the deadly effect of smoking, no such positive improvement has yet been observed (Brandão, Pimentel and Cardoso 2011).  Due to the social influence and lack of awareness, education, the young university students are becoming addicted to smoking. Moreover, instead of decrease, the habits grow up with the tendency. There are many studies conducted on the prevention and prohibition of smoking but the required awareness have not yet been observed and promoted. As the consequence, the cigarette smokers are being affected with serious diseases; they suffer from multiple deadly diseases that take their life. In each developing nation, the count of death due to the habit of smoking increases. Therefore, an intensive and experimental study is required to examine the impact and develop possible remedies.

The research methods determine the outcome of the research; this means the research methods should be implemented properly. Inappropriate implementation of research methods could lead to unexpected outcome. Therefore, to conduct the proposed research both primary and secondary analysis will be conducted. The primary research method includes the pilot study technique, where a survey will be conducted among the students of Wollongong University. The survey will be conducted among 10 students of the university. Details about the research methods have been discussed in the following.

Impact of Smoking Habits on University Students

As put forward by Tong et al. (2012), the research philosophy helps to manage the source, nature of development of knowledge. Therefore, while addressing the research philosophy, there should be a state of awareness in terms of formulating the beliefs and assumptions. Moreover, the research philosophy helps to extract the hidden facts from the research contexts. Usually, there are four different types of research philosophies namely positivism, interepretivism, realism and pragmatism.  The positivism research is related to the opinions that only factual knowledge obtained through observation. According to Miller et al. (2012), in positivism, the role of researcher is limited to the data collection and interpretation. On the other side, interepretivism helps to interpret the elements of the research; thereby, interepretivism integrates human interest into a research study. However, in the proposed study, positivism research philosophy will be used as positivism research philosophy provides the large scope of using both quantitative and qualitative research method.  It will help to gain the factual knowledge, which will help to analyze the finding related to the impact of smokers on the students of Wollongong University. On the other side, the interepretivism research philosophy will not be used because the primary data generated in such interepretivism practice cannot be generalized, as the data is largely impacted by the individual viewpoint as well as values.

The research approach is usually divided into two categories such as deductive approach and inductive approach. According to Snyder (2012), the deductive research approach is usually concerned with the formulation of research hypothesis based on the existing theory as well as the design of the research strategy to verify the research hypothesis. Conversely, the inductive research approach starts with the observation as well as theories that are proposed towards the end of the research process. However, in the context of proposed research, deductive research approach will be used , where a set of the hypotheses will be formed and they will be tested during the analysis of the data. On the contrary, the inductive research approach has been rejected because the outcome of the proposed study cannot be derived based on observation and theories only.  

The research design is usually divided into two different categories exploratory and descriptive. According to Anderson and Shattuck (2012), exploratory research in accordance to its name, it aims to discover the specific aspects of the research areas but it does not aim to provide final as well as conclusive answers to the research questions. On the other side, the descriptive study aims to cast light on the current issues, which means that this research design could help to identify the current impact of increasing habits of smoking on the university students. Therefore, considering this particular advantage, descriptive research objective will be applied to the proposed study.

Research Methods

The data collection techniques are usually divided into two different categories namely primary and secondary.

Primary Data Collection-The primary data will be conducted by applying qualitative data collection method. The qualitative data collection will include a pilot study method, where the students of Wollongong University will be surveyed by asking them to respond to some open-ended questions. The respondents will be selected based on the random sampling method and the capacity of sampling.

Secondary data collection- To conduct the secondary analysis, the secondary data will be collected from the reliable secondary sources such as books, journals, newsletter blogs and other reliable secondary sources. The analysis has been conducted in the literature review comparing the findings with each other.

In order to conduct the survey, a random sampling research method will be applied to engage the respondents in the survey. The respondents such as the students will be selected based on the criteria of random sampling technique. The capacity of sampling for the survey is 15, which means, 15 students could take part in the survey.

The research aims for investigating the factors of smoking habit in the University of Wollongong. The research also aims to find the impact of smoking of these students with accurate details. Thus, as a part of data collection, primary data collection method will be used. However, pilot process will be used in order to cross check the response given by the selected search respondents. Mackey and Gass (2015) depict that pilot study is a standard scientific tool that allows a research scholar to conduct a preliminary analysis prior analyzing the research outcome. Pilot test also refer to a survey, a key informant interview guide or observation form that is performed on a very few sample size. Silverman (2016) also stated that the total number of respondents participate in the research is known as sample size and here in this research 10 students will be considered. A set of 10 questions will be asked to each of the ten respondents regarding the habits of smoking. Among those 7 students, 3 students are smoker students; while, the rest of 2 students are non-smokers. The prime reason for selecting the smoker’s students is that they can clearly describe the impact of smoking and factors that encouraged them to smoke; however, the reason for selecting non-smokers students is that they can describe the habits they notice are noticing in smokers and what they think is the reason for which they opt for smoking. The research will aim on pilot testing in order to get an in-depth analysis of the developed research question.

Research Philosophy

The proposed analyses are appropriate and relevant to the research tools that will be used in the study because to conduct the analysis, pilot study method will be applied, which provides authentic data findings. This is because, the pilot study provides the scope to cross-check each answer of the question, which means the researcher ensures whether the respondent gives the right answer. Moreover, this research method will not create any state of confusion in the mind of the respondents because the responses of the participants are cross-checked. Thus, it can be mentioned that as with the help of such relevant tool like pilot study, unbiased and appropriate outcome can be derived.

The research questions, aims and objectives can be met, as in the proposed research, the data will be collected through pilot study method, which assures the authenticity of the data.  In addition to this, during the analysis, each research question will be linked to the findings derived by the research tools.  The research aim will be compared with the findings found after the collection of data. In the action plan, the first the research questions will be formed based on the research aim and objectives. Once the data is collection, during the analysis, it will be ensured that research findings cover the variables mentioned in the objectives.

This research will illustrate the smoking habits among the university student studies in the University of Wollongong. It is seen that especially the students after the age of 24 addicted to smoking, alcohols and tobacco. Universities in recent time are taking initiatives to make the college campus a smoke free area but after these initiatives also some college students are witnessed to addict to bad habits especially to cigarette the most. Thus, this research will aim to study the factors that boost the desire of the student to smoke and get addicted to it. The research will also represent the possible impact of the smoking that the smokers faces and will also suggest some solution that the university can take so that student wills start quitting smoking.

The significance of the study is that it illustrates the research held on the college students. The students of the University of Wollongong are taken into consideration so that they can represent their view directly on the smoking habits, factors that encourage them to smoke and the impact from which they are suffering will be shown. The significance of the study is that the research will follow a pilot testing in which all the research questions are cross-checked in order to understand whether or not the student (research respondents) get the meaning of the research properly.

Research Approach

The innovation of the research can be said based on the research technique that will be used in the research. A significant research are based on qualitative or quantitative research studies where a question is asked once and the response attained for each research question are considered as the final feedback based on which research outcome is judged. However, in this research two kinds of research respondents will be considered- smokers and non-smokers. The smokers students can easily describes the factors based on which they started smoking; while non-smokers can explain the habits that they noticed in the student, who smoke. After getting the response, all the respondents will be approached individually and asked about their view on each research question individually. In this way, each question can be analyzed in-depth that is not found in other research. Thus, it can be said that in this research, an accurate ideas regarding each research question will be obtained that will help to draw the possible factors and impact of smoking among the college students of University of Wollongong.

Strengths of the developed research tool

The developed research tool is used is pilot testing. The advantage is that each respondent is interviewed with all the research questions with ample time. Moreover, pilot experiment evaluate feasibility, time, cost and adverse events more precisely as personal comments on the research question is taken into consideration. Thus, this research tool will help with ideas, approaches and clues for getting a clearer finding in the main study and allows verifying the planned statistical and analytical procedures to assess the usefulness of the obtained data. Lastly, pilot testing reduces the number of unanticipated problems as in pilot testing the research question can be re-designed based on the convenience who is taking the interview. Another advantage is that pilot testing saves lot of time and money and always provides enough data to present a research outcome.

Limitations of the developed research tool

Though there are advantages of using pilot testing tool but there are some limitations associated with the same tool. The first disadvantage is that only few respondents are taken into consideration like in this research only 10 students are considered. On the other hand other research considers more research respondents in order to gather the perception of more number of respondents. Thus, by considering few respondents the research outcome might get improper authenticity while comparing it to with greater sample size. Another disadvantage is that it took much time to complete the data collection for the research as one research question is cross checked twice which demands much time compared to other type of research tool like quantitative data analysis. Additionally, pilot testing also allows for re-designing of research question if any respondent feel uncomfortable to answer some questions. The disadvantage in this process is the biasness of the interviewer as they are free to ask any question for satisfying the research outcome and this might violate the research ethics.

Research Design

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