Background: Smoking prevalence among female adults has traditionally been lower than prevalence among males in Taiwan. However, the smoking prevalence of female youth was increasing dramatically in recent years. The research purposes were to determine the smoking behaviors among different school types of female senior high students.

Method: The survey was conducted using school-based and employed a two-stage sampling design to produce nationally representative data in 2005. 25,618 participants from public and private senior high schools completed the self-administered questionnaire with a response rate of 92.77%. There were 13,365 female participants analyzed in this study.

Results: The smoking prevalence among female senior high students was 7.84% where 2.94% for general, 8.23% for vocational and 30.97% for night school students. 49% of the night students smoked more than 5 cigarettes per day which was significantly higher than others. The majority of smoking their first cigarette was due to curiosity. However, 16.99% night students first tried to smoke for stress releasing which was about two times than others. 48.63% general students reported that their resource of first cigarette was from their friends, significantly lower than vocational and night students.

Conclusions: The smoking behaviors were different among different types of senior high students. The increased smoking among girl students especially for night students is an emerging challenge for tobacco control in Taiwan, as it is for many countries in Asia.

Implications: Tailor-made tobacco interventions and prevention strategies targeting female night school students are needed to lower the risk of smoking initiation.