This paper examines the relationship between self-efficacy and social skills, assertiveness and the coping humor, in four situations of interpersonal conflicts (e.g. smoking, drinking, dieting and preventing pregnancy). The subjects were 501 university students and the questionnaire was anonymous.

　The analyses of the results are as follows:

1) For both men and women, self-efficacy was the highest when rejecting the offer to smoke while it was the lowest when refusing the offer to dieting. In case of the latter, self-efficacy was higher among men than women. In situations of preventing pregnancy and rejecting the offer to smoke, self-efficacy was higher among women. There was a significant difference in self-efficacy between men and women.

2) For both men and women, assertiveness was most strongly related to self-efficacy in the four situations of interpersonal conflicts. Based on further analysis (multiple linear regression analysis) of its lower factors “formation of relation factor" and “persuasive negotiation factor," a stronger connection with self-efficacy existed with “persuasive negotiation factor" and a negative relationship existed with “formation of relation factor."

　It can be concluded from the above that when trying to fully express one's self in situations of interpersonal conflicts (e.g. drinking and smoking), it is important to strengthen skills of assertiveness, especially the ones related to “persuasive negotiation factor."

　School connectedness is supposed to have a significant role in smoking and drinking prevention among young people. This study examined the relationships between school connectedness, socioeconomic status (SES), and drinking and smoking behaviors in high school students.

　A self-administered anonymous questionnaire was conducted among 3,248 students（aged 15-18）at 29 public high schools in Okinawa, Japan. Drinking and smoking behaviors were assessed using questions adapted from the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance conducted by the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention. A current drinker or smoker was defined as one who consumed an alcoholic beverage or smoked cigarettes at least one day in the past month. SES was assessed by parent's educational level. School connectedness was measured by the sum of a scale constructed from three items, ‛I like school', ‛School is a nice place to be', and ‛Sense of belonging at school'. Multivariate logistic regression models were performed to examine the associations among school connectedness, SES, drinking and smoking behaviors.

　After adjustment for gender, grade, school type, and family structure, students in lower SES group were more likely to drink and smoke than those in higher SES group. Students with lower school connectedness were more likely to drink and smoke than those with higher school connectedness. A combination of lower school connectedness and lower SES produced the strongest associations with drinking and smoking behaviors. On the other hand, students with lower SES but higher school connectedness did not significantly increase the odds of drinking and smoking.

　This study showed that school connectedness and SES were associated with drinking and smoking behaviors in high school students. The combination of school connectedness and SES had different influences on drinking and smoking behaviors. The findings suggest that promoting school connectedness may be important to prevent adolescent drinking and smoking, especially among lower SES group.

　In order to investigate the awareness of illegal drugs such as marijuana/hashish among college students, we conducted an awareness survey in Ibaraki University.

　The results were as follows:

1）About 90％ of the students had a high normative consciousness of avoiding the use of drugs such as marijuana/hashish, and the percentage of the students who had correct understanding of drugs was also high. On the other hand, about 1～5％ of the students had an incorrect understanding of drugs and a low normative consciousness of drug use.

2）With regard to the increase in abuser of drugs such as marijuana/hashish, over70％ of the students answered that drugs are readily available.

3）Five Point three％ of the students have the experience of Seeing or hearing about a drug abuse incident in their vicinity, and 0.9％ of them have the experience of being drawn into the drug abuse.

4）Male students perceive drugs as a fashionable statement and as products that give sensual pleasure, and they have a lower normative consciousness of drug use in comparison with female students.

5）Smokers also perceive drugs as a fashionable statement, and they have a low normative consciousness of drug use in comparison with non-smokers.

6）Students, who have the experience of watching or listening about a drug abuse incident in their vicinity and of being drawn into drug abuse, tend to perceive drugs as a fashionable statement and as a product that gives sensual pleasure; they have a lower normative consciousness of drug use in comparison with students who do not have such experiences.

7）In response to dealing with a friend involved in drug abuse, students answered that they report to or consult with facilities such as the police, college or hospital, but their replies were not firm. The various directive supports that they might give to their friends were also indefinable.

　Therefore, in the present context, college students feel that illegal drugs such as marijuana/hashish are familiar to them. Students, who have an incorrect understanding of drugs and a lower normative consciousness of drug use, get involved in the risk of experimenting with drugs easily owing to the influence of friends. With regard to the prevention of drug abuse, the university authorities need to give attention to the spread of drugs through friends and to take the concrete measures to provide a counseling service for drug abuse prevention in the campus.

　The main purpose of this pilot study was to explore adolescents' medicine use and clarify the relationships between self-esteem, stress management skills and medicine use among junior high school students.

　The study sample was comprised of 111 students (59 boys and 52 girls) in the ninth grade from one public junior high school in Fukuoka prefecture. The data were collected in September 2010, using an anonymous self-administered questionnaire.

　The main results were as follows.

1) Most of the students (93.2% of boys, 94.2% of girls) had taken medicines in the last year. Likewise, about a half of the students (46.6% of boys, 48.1% of girls) had done so in the last month.

2) The percentages of students who had had experience with taking medicines without consulting with adults were 35.6% in boys and 42.3% in girls. For buying medicines by themselves, the percentages were 5.1% in boys and 5.8% in girls. For getting medicines from their friends, the percentages were 13.8% in boys and 26.9% in girls, and for giving medicines to their friends, the percentages were 11.9% in boys and 19.2% in girls.

3) Many of the students (57.6% of boys and 67.3% of girls) consulted their parents “every time" when they took medicines, and 71.2% of the students thought that parents were reliable information sources about medicines.

4) The students who had had experience with buying medicines by themselves showed lower family-related self-esteem score and higher emotion-focused coping strategies score than who did not.

5) The students who had had experience with getting medicines from their friends showed lower general self-esteem score and higher emotion-focused coping strategies score than who did not.

6) The students who did not follow the rules such as taking medicines in a recommended time showed lower general self-esteem and family-related self-esteem scores, and higher emotion-focused coping strategies score.

　The results of this study imply that there are some relationships between self-esteem, stress management skills and medicine use among junior high school sudents. However, because this study was a pilot study with a small sample, the validity of the conclusion should be confirmed in a large-scale study.

　This study aims to examine the practice status and attitudes of elementary school children and their parents toward hand washing and the related factors.

　The subjects were elementary school students and their parents. The resporders were as below: 336 pupils in the second to fifth grade among three schools and 190 parents of them. The survey was conducted on the practice status and attitudes toward hand washing in nine situations for children, such as before school lunch, and in six situations for parents, such as before cooking, and the training on hand washing provided by parents. The nine situations for children consist of three each at school, at school and home, and at home. The six situations for parents consist of those at home. Although the survey was anonymous, the response of each child was corresponded to that of his/her parent through an ID number.

　The percentage of children who always washed their hands with soap ranged from 13% to 60% in the nine situations, while the percentage of parents ranged from 51% to 87% in the six situations. The correlation coefficients between the practice status and the attitudes of children ranged from 0.181 to 0.421 (p ＜0．05). Moreover, the number of significant correlation coefficients (which ranged from 0.124 to 0.358) between parents' and children's practice in the situations at school was one out of eighteen, while the corresponding number for the situations at home was twelve out of eighteen. Further, the number of significant correlations (which ranged from 0.151 to 0.363) between parents' training and children's practice in the situations at school was one out of eighteen, while the corresponding number was seven out of eighteen at home.

　Thus, parents' practice and training of hand washing influenced children's implementation moderately at home; the influence at school was extremely small. Moreover, it was suggested that other measures, besides parents' training, were necessary to improve the practice of hand washing by children.

Objective: The purpose of this study was to investigate the possibility of implementing cancer education for upper grade elementary school pupils.

Methods: We conducted a document analysis on government guidelines for teaching as well as a semistructured interview with five teachers who were responsible for primary school education in metropolitan Japan. Regarding the document analysis, the latest government guidelines for teaching at primary and junior high school were downloaded from the website of the Ministry of Education (162 pages,150, 908letters) and a dataset (in Adobe Acrobat PDF) was developed to use for the review. Some keywords seemingly related to cancer education were set to run searches on the dataset. We sorted and analyzed the number of keywords for relevant grades, subjects, and detail contents of the subjects. We did not focus on quantitative measures on cancer education relevancy to the government teaching guidelines, but rather on its trends. Regarding the semi-structured interview, a group interview was conducted concerning knowledge about cancer, teaching styles in general, general teaching materials that they would desire, sources of teaching information, and attitude toward cancer education. Qualitative analysis was used to capture perspectives related to teachers' perceptions about cancer education by extracting codes, sub categories and categories from the interview text data.

Results: The document analyses showed the relevancy of cancer education at all grades of primary and junior high school and several subjects. From the qualitative analysis on the interviews with five teachers, thirteen identified codes for teachers' idea about cancer education emerged and were grouped into five sub categories (“teacher's accurate knowledge," “connection with the school's educational principle," “connection with possible subjects for cancer education," “negative imagination formation," and “teacher's prejudice about cancer").

Two categories were then abstracted: “the sense of possible cancer education," and “the sense of impossible cancer education." Finally a structured model showed the relationship among the categories, considered the process of shaping teachers' idea of cancer education.

Conclusions: The results from this study, consisting of analyses on the content of teaching guidelines and interviews with school teachers, showed the possibility of cancer education for upper grade elementary school pupils. It is suggested that encouraging teachers to obtain accurate knowledge about cancer and to build supportive environments for providing cancer information are necessary. Further research to verify the model as well as to assess impacts when cancer education is widely implemented utilizing health impact assessment for cancer education is needed.