[Smoking patterns among boys and girls in Danish elementary school classes].

Introduction: The objective was to study the correlation between male and female smoking prevalence in elementary school classes at grade nine through group-level analysis.

Material And Methods: Data was collected by the 1998 Danish contribution to the cross-national study Health Behaviour in School-Aged Children. A standardised questionnaire was applied. This study included ninety school classes at grade nine (1515 students) from a random sample of schools in Denmark. The outcome measure was the proportion of male and female smokers in the school classes.

Results: The proportion of male and female smokers within the school classes did not correlate. For both boys and girls there was a high variation in the proportion of smokers between the school classes.

Discussion: The smoking-related social processes that exist in the school classes probably operate in a sex-differentiated manner. The effect of the classroom environment on the students' smoking behaviour must be considered differently for boys and girls.