The Relationship between Self Esteem and Smoking in Adolescents in the UK - Research Proposal Example

Research Proposal: The Relationship between Self Esteem and Smoking in Adolescents in UK Table of contents Introduction 1 Literature review 4 Research Audiences 9 Ethical Implications 9 Research methodology 10 Activities and Implementation Timeline: 12 Bibliography 13 Introduction Over the past few years the level of smoking has seen dip when compared to the past years. It has been noted that almost 21% of the total population of United Kingdom have been recorded to be smokers. These statistics of smokers is relatively much lower than the amounts that have been recorded in the past. In the earlier years as far as 1974, the government has been able to record as many as 45% of the total population to be smokers in the United Kingdom (NHS, 2009). This report as the name suggests, is a proposal for a dissertation which aims at understanding and gaining complete information about the relationship between smokers and the self esteem. The main target here will be the adolescents of the country. Background The World health organisation has done numerous researches about the smoking and smoking statistics. This research is based on smoking in adolescence in the UK. Before moving into the topic directly, it is essential to gain a perspective of the smoking statistics that has been provided by the WHO (Ready to Quit, 2008). These are as follows: a) The highest level of smoking is among people with 9 - 11 years of education and totals to as much as 37.5% and is much lower or lowest among people with 16 or more years of education as little as 14%. b) The level of smokers living below poverty levels is much higher and totals to as much as 32.5% than people living at or above the poverty level at 23.8%. c) As many as 25 million men and 19.3 million women have been former smokers. This accounts to approximately 44.3 million adults. d) Nearly 15 billion cigarettes are sold everyday, which accounts for almost 10 million every minute. Smoking is the cause of death for almost one in ten adults globally. e) Every 8 seconds someone dies of tobacco use and this translates to approximately 5 million deaths annually (Ygoy, 2008). Figure: Percentage of Smokers across the Globe (TIMES, 2009) Smoking is seen to become a part of the lifestyle of people very easily and there are several reasons for this, these will be discussed further in the research. Aim of study The aim of the study is to gain a clear detailed understanding of the relationship between self esteem and smoking among the adolescents in UK. The ultimate aim is to increase the awareness and to bring out the research findings to be able to attain the relationship of how the self esteem of a person can affect the smoking habits (Crocker, 2004). This will allow us to provide for a few recommendations to the readers to help reduce the chances of becoming smoking addicts. Why is this Worth Investigating? With the growing number of adolescents becoming major addicts of various harmful things like drugs, cigarettes and alcohol, this study will help gain a perspective of why adolescents tend to turn towards these and whether these provide them with any kind of assistance to get over issues in life. Also the main aim is to understand if the adolescents gain any self esteem or any form of assistance to be able to get over the self esteem issues (Baumeister, 2005). This is worth researching as it will provide a small contribution to the topic and will be helpful to bring out newer measures and solutions to resolve or at least reduce the smoking in adolescents in the UK. Research questions 1 – What is the role of self esteem and esteem issues in the smoking habits of individuals? 2 – What kind of solutions can be implemented to assist the adolescent smokers? 3 – What are the main causes for the low self esteem among the adolescents? Literature review The literature review will provide a description of the theoretical framework of the study. This includes a definition of self esteem, and statistics of smokers in the country. Also a discussion of the statistics of adolescent smokers will also be discussed. Self Esteem Self – Esteem refers to taking pride in oneself and being proud of the person one is. Self – esteem plays a central role of everyone’s life. Knowing or unknowingly, the self esteem of a person can lead to the success or failure of the person. Understanding this and recognising this is one of the most essential aspects in life (Braden, 2001). Over the years, psychologists have noted that the level of self esteem plays a major role in the beliefs, emotions, and also behaviours of the individuals. Self esteem is synonyms with other terms like, self – worth, self – regard, self – respect, self – love, self – integrity, self – confidence and self – efficacy. According to Branden’s (1969) description of self-esteem, it includes the following: 1. Self-esteem as a basic human need, i.e., "...it makes an essential contribution to the life process", "...is indispensable to normal and healthy self-development, and has a value for survival." 2. Self-esteem as an automatic and inevitable consequence of the sum of individuals' choices in using their consciousness 3. Something experienced as a part of, or background to, all of the individuals thoughts, feelings and actions (Braden, 1969). Other researches have also shown that the level of self esteem is generally much lesser in girls than in boys. The lack of self esteem from young ages leave the children with no choice but to move into something which is more harmful and is very satisfying to hide away the feeling of low self esteem. This is how children tend to move into smoking at ages of adolescence. There have been a number of arguments and disagreements whether the level of self esteem has any affect on the health behaviour of the individuals. “Although the correlation between smoking and self-esteem is not clear, school-based health education programs, aimed at raising adolescents self-esteem, have evolved to prevent smoking among adolescents. Previous studies that attempt to show an association between smoking and self-esteem among adolescents have compared mean self-esteem scores between groups of smokers and non-smokers. Using the mean score as a summary statistic of self-esteem for the whole population does not adequately reflect the distribution of scores in that population. Moreover, this summary score is hard to interpret and may simply represent a skewed population in which a large proportion of adolescents score either high or low. The present study, however, compares the smoking status of students at the extreme high and low ends of the self-esteem scale, assuming that if no differences can be detected between them, an association is not likely” (Abernathy, et. al, 1995). Researchers have found that the effects of self esteem can be on a wide range of things in the daily lives, which include the mental health, physical well being, eating disorders, depression, and unhealthy addictions like alcohol, tobacco and smoking. This will be touched upon in detail within the actual research that will be conducted. Self Regulation According to a research conducted by Crocker et.al, self regulation is another essential aspect of a person’s wellbeing. She explains that “the willingness to exert effort toward one’s most important goals, while taking setbacks and failures as opportunities to learn, identify weaknesses and address them, and develop new strategies toward achieving those goals” (Crocker, Brook, & Niiya, 2006). This is an essential element of the research and this highlights how people who break down due to the pressures and set backs and are faced with crisis, tend to have lower levels of self – esteem. Also this can lead them to take up bad habits and become addicts to harmful habits like drinking, smoking and consumption of drugs (Mruk, 2006). Smoker Statistics (UK) The various statistics of smokers in the country over the years has relatively reduced. This can be noted in the image below which provides for the percentage of the smokers over the age of 16. This shows a trend of the smokers over the years of 1974 – 2005. Figure: Prevalence of cigarette smoking by age (Cancer Research UK, 2009) Researches from the Cancer Research (UK), highlight that the main age group of people smoking in the UK falls within 20 – 24 years. There is a high 32% of this age groups who fall into the category of smokers. Childhood Smokers The studies and researches from the cancer institute has also shown the smoking pattern within the childhood (Cancer Research UK, 2009). It has been noted that less than 1% of the children between the ages of 11 and 12 have been recorded to smoke, however by the age of 15, in every 5, i.e. 20% of the children tend to become regular smokers in England. Although the age of smoking and buying tobacco has been set to 16 years, yet the children have been noted to have become regular smokers. It has also been noted that almost 9% of the children between the ages of 11 -15 have been noted to smoke the minimum of one cigarette each week. It is also essential to note that almost 10% of these are girls while only 7% are boys (Cancer Research UK, 2009). Over the years, Great Britain has seen a consistently higher rate of young girls as smokers since 1986. By the year 2006, (as seen below), it was noted that almost 24% of the 15 year old girls were regular smokers when compared to the 16% of boys. It has also been recorded that an average child smokes as much as 42 cigarettes per week in the country (Cancer Research UK, 2009). Figure 2: Percentage of children smoking regularly in England (Cancer Research UK, 2009) Importance of Studying Adolescents and Smoking Adolescence is a very sensitive age for all. This age determines the person’s personality, person’s habits and also the behaviours. This study is very important as it help look at the issues that cause people to take up unhealthy habits and harmful habits. The various studies in the past have shown that the reasons for people to take on unhealthy habits are many which include, living in a smoking environment with parents, peers or sibling, being part of one parent family, bad academic records, low self – confidence or self – esteem and even being exposed to tobacco advertising. It has been noted that children tend to become addicted to nicotine and to tobacco just like as adults and they tend to take solace in these unhealthy items. Similar to adults who have low levels of self – esteem and motivation tend to take comfort in abusing themselves by use of drugs, alcohol and tobacco, children tend to shown similar symptoms behavioural aspects (Cancer Research UK, 2009). It is essential to understand how the children move into such habits and the underlying reasons for this behaviour at the right time to be able to mould the children and help them overcome and find solutions for the issues before these become an addiction. Research Audiences The dissertation focuses on the companies in the United Kingdom and the general public of the country. This dissertation will be of interest to: Other researchers in the field The parents, friends and family members of smoking adolescents to help provide them with support to be able to move out of the smoking habit Adolescents themselves to be able to understand the reasons why they smoke Teachers and counsellors of adolescents to help the adolescents move out of the self esteem issues Anybody interested in learning about the relationship of smoking and self esteem issues Researchers who wish to take the research further and get deeper and more accurate findings for the research. Ethical Implications Since the topic is very sensitive, the ethical issues for this will also be very high. However since the researcher does not plan to utilise any form of primary research, there will be no contact with the target, i.e. adolescent smoker or families. Hence the ethical implications for this are very low and the researcher will not need to fill out the ‘Ethics form’ from the University. Research methodology This part of the proposal describes the research approaches and methodology which will be utilised in the proposed research. It also provides an overview of the data collection methods, the type of data to be used and the method of data analysis. These will be linked to the theories and modules outlined in the literature review. Research paradigm A paradigm can have various meanings. It refers to “your basic beliefs” and your approach to the world which affects the way you define your research and how you collect and analyse data (Collis & Hussey, 2003, p. 47). The research approaches used in the study comprises a mixture of both the “phenomenological paradigm” which is also referred to as a “qualitative” approach, and the “positivistic paradigm” also known as the “quantitative” approach (Collis & Hussey, 2003, p. 47). “Phenomenological” is based on the word “phenomenon” which means a fact that happened or an event that was witnessed. With the phenomenological approach the focus is on “understanding the human behaviour from the participant’s own frame of reference” (Collis & Hussey, 2003, p. 53). As this approach is related to an event within a context of time and place, the aim is to investigate an event by carrying out your own research to “construct new theory to explain the phenomenon” (Collis & Hussey, 2003, pp. 56-57) or use existing theory. The aim and focus with this approach is “on the quality and depth of data” (Collis & Hussey, 2003, pp. 56-57). Chosen Methodology As the research involves a very sensitive issue, hence it would be best to use a secondary research for the study. The research will be done using number of books and the already existing theories. A number of theories will be touched upon however focus will be placed on how the self esteem of a person can affect the smoking habits in the adolescents with a major focus on girls. The research will touch upon the work of major authors and researchers of the field to bring out the underlying reasons of how the esteem plays an important role in the adolescents. Data sources Secondary data refers to information published by others and which is already available (Collis & Hussey, 2003, pp. 53-54). It is also data collected by other people rather than the researcher who is carrying out the study (Sekaran, 2000, p. 255). Secondary data is information available from books, journals and online resources. Data Collection Methods Secondary data will be gathered from books, journals, and online news, general, and government websites, some of which is referred to in the literature review. However, data collected from the internet will be considered with caution. This data needs to be evaluated based on its author which helps to identify whether the site is trusted or not, as the internet is “an open door to nonsense to appear, and one way of checking on this is knowing about the author” (Berry, 2004, p. 32). Data Analysis The data will be collected and analysed keeping the questions in mind. Each of the questions will be answered separately using all of the statistics and theoretical background of the topic. Efforts will be put into ensuring the latest statistics are got from the secondary sources which will be used to provide statistics and will be used for analysis to bring out the simple aspects like mean of the number of adolescents smoking in the UK and the trends over the past and also the gender – wise analysis of the issue. Activities and Implementation Timeline: The research will contain a number of activities. The table provided below provides for the timeline for the implementation of the activities. . Activities Timeline Collecting and reading data for research 2 weeks Creating a well planned dissertation flow and allocation of information 1 week Literature review 3 weeks Analysis of findings 3 weeks Completing the dissertation 1 week Revising, editing, proof reading and submission 2 weeks Please note this is an approximate of the time needed for each of the activities. There might be some changes based on time it takes for each of the steps. Bibliography Abernathy, T.J., Massad, L., & Romano – Dwyer, L, 1995, ‘The relationship between smoking and self-esteem’, Winter 1995, Accessed on 12th September 2009, Retrieved from http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2248/is_n120_v30/ai_17856546/ Baumeister, R.F., 2005, ‘exploding the Self Esteem Myth’, Scientific American, January 2005 Berry, R., 2004, ‘The Research Project’, 5th edn., New York: Routledge Branden, N., 1969, ‘The psychology of self-esteem’, New York: Bantam Branden, N., 2001, ‘The psychology of self-esteem: a revolutionary approach to self-understanding that launched a new era in modern psychology’, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2001, ISBN 0787945269 Cancer Research UK, 2009, ‘Lung Cancer and Smoking Statistics’, 28th April 2009, Accessed on 10th September 2009, Retrieved from http://info.cancerresearchuk.org/cancerstats/types/lung/smoking/ Collis, J. & Hussey, R., 2003, ‘Business Research: A practical guide for undergraduate and postgraduate students’, 2nd edn. London: Macmillan Press Ltd Crocker, J., & Park, L.E, 2004, ‘The Costly pursuit of self – esteem’ , Psychological Bullettin, 130(3), p. 382 – 420 Crocker, J., Brook, A. T., & Niiya, Y., 2006, ‘The pursuit of self-esteem: Contingencies of self-worth and self-regulation’, Journal of Personality, 74(6), 1749-1771 Denzin, N. K. & Lincoln, Y. S. (eds.) 2000, ‘Handbook of Qualitative Research’, 2nd edn., London: Sage Publications, Inc Mruk, C., 2006, ‘Self-Esteem research, theory, and practice: Toward a positive psychology of self-esteem’, 3rd edition, New York: Springer NHS, 2009, ‘Statistics on Smoking, England, 2008’, Accessed on 11th September 2009, Retrieved from http://www.ic.nhs.uk/statistics-and-data-collections/health-and-lifestyles/smoking/statistics-on-smoking-england-2008-%5Bns%5D Ready to Quit, 2008, ‘Smoking Statistics’, Accessed on 10th September 2009, Retrieved from http://www.readytoquit.com/content/articles/smoking-statistics Saunders, M. & Lewis, P. & Thornhill, A., 2000, ‘Research Methods for Business Students’, 2nd edn., Harlow: Pearson Education Limited Sekaran, U., 2000, ‘Research Methods for Business, A Skill-Building Approach’, 3rd edn., New York: John Wiley & Sons Inc Silverman, D., 2005, ‘Doing Qualitative Research’, 2nd edn., London: Sage Publications TIMES, 2009, ‘Leading Causes of Death’, 29th July 2009, Accessed on 9th September 2009, Retrieved from http://www.time.com/time/interactive/0,31813,1911060,00.html Waters, D., 2001, ‘Quantitative Methods for Business’, 3rd edn., Harlow: Pearson Education Limited Ygoy, 2008, ‘Smoking Statistics – Global Stats’, Accessed on 11th September 2009, Retrieved from http://smoking.ygoy.com/smoking-statistics-global-stats/ Read More