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614with SPD in women only10). Another study using data from the Comprehensive Survey of Living Conditions (CSLC) showed that SPD was associ-ated with people currently smoking in Japan, and the association was greater for women than for men2). These suggested that there may be gender differences in the association between smoking behaviors and stress.Women tend to have a higher risk of anxiety and depressive disorders due to the gender-based differ-ences that may emanate from biomedical (hormonal, anatomical, and hippocampal neurogenesis), psycho-social (personality, coping, and symptom reporting), or epidemiological population-based risk factors (cultural, social, economic, and political proce-dures)11-13). Sociocultural roles and adverse life events involving children, housing, or reproductive problems result in increased responsibilities for women, which may also cause a clear gender differ-ence in the excess of depression onset among women12).To promote non-smoking policies, the Japanese government’s Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (MHLW) recommended offering smoking cessation support programs through health checkups and a health guidance system, provided mainly by public health nurses. The programs would be covered by individuals’ medical insur-ance. Although the existence of stress is inter-viewed, the sources of stress that relate to smoking behavior and the advice to solve these were not considered in the programs14). As the associations between smoking behaviors and stressors can differ between genders, it may be useful for effective smoking prevention programs to identify the gender-specific sources of worry and stress that could relate to smoking behaviors. However, few studies have examined the associa-tion between the sources of stress and smoking behavior using a large national dataset representa-tive of the population in Japan. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine the gender- specific stress sources associated with smoking behavior among the general Japanese population.Data sourceWe used the data collected in 2010 for the CSLC, a survey conducted by the MHLW. It is a self-ad-ministered questionnaire survey with the purposes of researching the basic subjects of living condi-tions such as health, medical care, welfare, pension, and income and of obtaining the basic data that are required for the planning and management of the Health, Labour and Welfare administration. This survey covers households and household members across the nation. Data on entire households (around 290,000 households) and household members (around 750,000 persons) in the 5,510 areas selected by stratified random sampling from sub-districts 1 and 8 of the 2005 Population Census’s enumeration districts were used. We got official approval to use the secondary data from the Statistics and Informa-tion Department of the MHLW. We also used the data from the household and health questionnaires of the CSLC in 2010. SubjectsThe anonymous data of 34,483 men and 36,830 women between 20-79 years of age were obtained from the MHLW. Of these, 10,742 and 1,170 people did not answer the questions regarding smoking status and experience of stress, respectively. We excluded these non-respondents from the present study. In the end, the data from 59,401 people (28,588 men and 30,813 women) aged 20-79 years old were used for this study.Assessment of smoking statusRegarding smoking status, participants were asked “Do you smoke?” and the options for selection were “Non-smoker,” “Smoking every day,” “Smoking occasionally,” or “Smoking before but have not smoked for more than 1 month.” We defined the subjects who chose “Smoking everyday” as “Smokers,” and the subjects who chose “Non-smokers,” “Smoking occasionally,” or “Smoking before but have not smoked for more than 1 month” as “Non-smokers.”Assessment of worry and stressSimilar to the previous study15), the participants were asked ”Do you have worry and stress now?”, and only the persons who answered “Yes” were further asked to answer all items that matched their sources of worry and stress as follows: “Rela-tionship with family,” “Relationship with nonfamily members,” “Related to love-making or sex,” “Marriage,” “Divorce,” “Bullying, sexual harass-Methods