CHICAGO, Mar 12, 2001 (United Press International via COMTEX) -- Teens who attend highly competitive schools with rigorous academic expectations are more likely to smoke cigarettes than adolescents who feel less pressured at school, researchers said.

The University of Chicago study released Monday also found black teens less likely to begin smoking than whites, Hispanics or Asians.

"Troubled white adolescents often take up cigarette smoking to express their opposition to individuals or institutions that have rejected them, or which in their view, have treated them unfairly," said Robert A. Johnson, a senior researcher at the university's National Opinion Research Center.

Johnson said black adolescents, especially those attending mostly minority schools, often received more community support to avoid smoking. Despite the well-publicized, long-term health risks, about 25 percent of Americans smoke. About a-third of teens who try smoking continue the habit on a daily basis.

The findings are published in the current issue of the Journal of Health and Social Behavior.

"Our study supports previous research by showing that an adolescent's parents and peer group strongly influence whether or not the adolescent becomes a cigarette smoker, but we also found that schools can make a difference," Johnson said.

The research indicates stress from high academic standards plays a role when teens decide to smoke, especially for girls. Students at highly competitive schools were more likely to smoke than students with similar levels of academic performance at less competitive schools.

"We think that students who are perceived as failing at academically competitive schools experience more intense frustration and greater loss of social stature than otherwise similar adolescents because those schools place such great emphasis upon academic achievement," Johnson said. "It is the frustration and loss of social status associated with failing to meet the school's standards, more than anything else, that explain why adolescents at competitive schools take up cigarette smoking."

The study looked at national data on more than 16,000 eighth-grade students and 13,000 10th graders from the late 1980s, and follow up surveys and interviews conducted through 1994.

"We were able to factor out individual, peer, and family influences and then look at the separate effect of the school," Johnson said. He said competitive pressures, such as increased use of standardized tests, might help explain why cigarette smoking increased rapidly among U.S. teens during the 1990s.

Black adolescents were the exception -- with black teens smoking at half the rate for white youth. They also smoked less than Hispanic and Asian peers.

"Controlling for all other factors, such as poor performance or living with a single parent, the risk of starting smoking is lower in a high-minority school than in a school with more whites," said study co-author John Hoffman, an associate professor at Brigham Young University.

"Minority teens who are attending high-minority schools have a protective effect against initiating cigarette smoking."

Copyright 2001 by United Press International.

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