Factors affecting chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) risk awareness among adults exposed to active and second-hand smoke

Tee, Joo Eer and Wong, Siuw Ying (2026) Factors affecting chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) risk awareness among adults exposed to active and second-hand smoke. Final Year Project, UTAR.

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Abstract

Although the medical infrastructure and health literacy are more and more well developed and discovered, the risk of being diagnosed with chronic disease, COPD, still lacks awareness. Therefore, several studies on smokers’ COPD awareness have been carried out in different countries. However, even though studies found that smokers have low awareness of COPD risk, other categories of smokers that involve passively smoking are often overlooked. Hence, the Health Belief Model was utilized in this study to determine how the perceived severity of COPD, perceived benefits of health screening, perceived barriers, and perceived self-efficacy affect COPD risk awareness among adults exposed to active and second-hand smoke. The quantitative approach is conducted to collect and analyse data for the research. Respondents are being selected through cluster sampling, and 606 respondents among adults exposed to active and second-hand smoke answered the questionnaire distributed. Then, the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 30.0 was used to carry out a Multiple Linear Regression Analysis. The results of the study found that four independent variables, perceived severity of COPD, perceived benefits of health screening, perceived barriers, and perceived self-efficacy, are all significant to COPD risk awareness. Hence, in order to increase the awareness of COPD risk among adults exposed to active and second-hand smoke, it is recommended that governments, employers, healthcare providers, and other relevant stakeholders should further concentrate on the factors like perceived severity, perceived benefits, perceived barriers, and perceived self-efficacy and raise awareness on COPD chronic conditions that exposed to health problems.

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