Health Education and Smoking Prevention

The purpose of the present study was to determine the extent to which a health education program, aimed at preventing teen smoking effectively addressed the issue of peer and family pressure in the adoption of smoking by adolescents. Using the SPQ, designed for the study, two instructional programs were compared with a control group of subjects receiving no prevention training. The results of the study showed significant differences among the groups. Pre and post test scores indicated significant gains in pressure avoidance skills for both prevention training groups but not for the control group. The benefits of the types of programs studied here and the implications for prevention of smoking in adolescents were discussed.

Smoking prevention has been espoused as a desirable alternative to cessation programs aimed at youth. This position is based on the arguments that: 1) more young people can be reached in prevention programs than in cessation programs, 2) preventing the onset of smoking is easier than eliciting and maintaining cessation, 3) smoking of even short duration may be harmful to some, and 4) even if programs only delay rather than truly prevent the onset of smoking, there will be substantial health benefits to the population for whom the delay has occurred.

Recently, a number of researchers have developed and tested adolescent smoking prevention programs (Botvin, 1980). Critical reviews of these recent prevention programs are Johnson (1982), a

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oking program classes were tested. Apparatus. The Smoking Pressure Questionnaire was based on the other measures which have been used in the evaluation of smoking programs for adults and children (An Evaluation Handbook for Health Education Programs in Smoking, 1983). Items were taken from several of the measures in order to test the particular issue under consideration, namely, overcoming pressures to smoke from peers and family. A copy of the questionnaire is produced in Appendix A. Fifteen items were included in the questionnaire and fieldtested for readability with 15 nonparticipating subjects. No problems were encountered in the reading or understanding of any of the items in the questionnaire. The first ten items were used to measure the subjects' knowledge of appropriate responses to peer pressures to smoke, while the last five items measure appropriate responses to parental modeling. The questionnaire was scored by tabulating the number of correct responses for each item, also shown in the Appendix. Procedures. Letters were mailed out to schools which met the initial criteria for inclusion in the study. Of these schools only those who showed an interest in being in the study were further evaluated for incl

Category: Psychology - H