Examining the Smoke-free and Scent-free Policies at Dalhousie University

Abstract

For our Greening the Campus project we chose to focus on the scent-free and smoke-free policies at Dalhousie University. Our main objectives for this project were to find out how many of the Dalhousie students are aware of the policies and of those aware how many adhered to the policies. We were also interested in finding out how the students had become aware of the policies as well as their level of understanding towards the policies. Studley campus became our chosen research site and our sample group consisted of 187 students. The students were sampled at random on campus, by email and in the classroom. Purposive sampling was the method used to hand out our questionnaire on campus and to classrooms and the snowball sampling method was used to distribute our questionnaires through email. Our main findings showed that of the students surveyed 92.5% were aware of the scent-free policy and 96% were aware of the smoke-free policy. For those students aware of the policies 36% adhered to the scent-free policy and 73% adhered to the smoke-free policy. In terms of understanding the policies 60% claimed to understand the health effects caused by lack of adherence to the scent-free policy and 100% claimed to understand the latter for the smoke-free policy. Our research shows that students are aware of the scent-free and smoke-free policies at Dalhousie University. However, the students are not adhering to these policies due to lack of proper education on the policies. We believe education to be the key to policy enforcement.