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), and Evans (1982). The programs that have met with consistent success share a number of features in common. All have been based on social psychological theory and research, mostly notable on attitude change theory (McGuire, 1969), social learning theory and attribution theory (Jones et al., 1972). All have been school based programs targeted for the most part at seventh grade students.
Evans (1979) developed the first of several recently tested social psychological ...