OBJECTIVETo study the influencing factors of smoking among university students on individual and classes level by multilevel model and to identify high risk groups in order to develop pertinent prevention measures which can decrease smoking behavior among university students.

METHODSSelf-reported data on knowledge, attitude and behavior on smoking coming from a randomly clustered sampling of 24 classes in students from 12 universities in Tianjin.

RESULTSThrough analyses of 743 questionnaires from university students, we learned that the occasional smoking rate was 10.0% , the regular smoking rate was 7.4% and 5.9% had given up smoking. The influencing factors for students who smoked occasionally and regularily were gender (OR values were 0.243 and 0. 186), moods (OR values were 0.071 and 0.078) and environment (OR values were 2.722 and 19.075). Gender (OR value was 0. 180), age (OR value was 1.567), moods (OR value was 0.221) and environment (OR value was 2.776) had positive influences on students in giving up their smoking behavior.

CONCLUSIONAccording to the different status of university students, different measures should be taken to prevent smoking and to change thier smoking behavior.