Smoking attitudes
DIFFERENCES IN SMOKING ATTITUDES ADOLESCENTS AND YOUNG ADULTS1 EVDOXIA KOSMIDOU and YIANNIS THEODORAKIS University of Thessaly
Psychological Reports, 2007, 101, 475-481
1
Address correspondence to Dr. Yiannis Theodorakis, Department of Physical
Education and Sport Science, University of Thessaly, Karies, 42 100 Trikala, Greece e-mail (
[email protected]).
Smoking attitudes
Summary. This study employed the theory of planned behavior to examine the differences between adolescents (n=182) and young adults (n=209) in their intention to smoke and examined possible differences. Analysis showed that young adults had more positive attitudes toward smoking than adolescents, had higher intentions to smoke, lower self-reported perceived behavioral control over smoking and perceived they were more informed about smoking. The theory of planned behavior provided good prediction of intention for both young adults (R2= .70, attitudes, information and past behavior significant predictors) and adolescents (R2= .68, attitudes, past behavior significant predictors). For both populations attitude was the strongest predictor of intention to smoke. Implications for understanding smoking behavior between adolescents and young adults are discussed.
Smoking attitudes
Smoking is an unhealthy behavior, responsible for a large number of deaths all over the world. Approximately one in five deaths in the USA each year are attributed to cigarette smoking (Anton, Cortez-Cooper, DeVan, Neidre, Cook, & Tanaka, 2006). In Greece2, 41.7% of the population over 14 years old smoke cigarettes. According to the National Statistical Service of Greece 10% of 15 olds smoke and 27.5% of 18 olds smoke. In European Union-15 the percentage of the population smoking daily in 1999 was 41.3 for young people age 15 to 24 years3. It seems that teenage smoking is a widespread social phenomenon in Greece (Strong & Sidira, 2006). Although there is extensive research on smoking amongst adolescents there research on college and university students is limited (Bower & Enzler, 2005). Unhealthy behaviors such as smoking may become a lifetime pattern for many students who begin to smoke during this stage of their life (Wechsler, Rigotti, & Gledhill-Hoyt, 1998). The Theory of Planned Behavior (Ajzen, 1988, 1991) allows examining relations of number of socio-cognitive variables with intention or behavior. The key predictive variables of the mode are intention to engage in a specific behavior, attitudes toward the behavior, one’s perception about others’ approval or disapproval of his engagement in the behavior (called a subjective norm), and one’s perception whether one can control the behavior (Ajzen, 1988, 1991). Intention to perform a behavior can be predicted by the attitudes toward performing that behavior, the subjective norm and perceived behavioral control (called perceived ease or difficulty in performing the behavior). The more favourable are attitude and subjective norm and the greater the perceived control is, the stronger should be the person’s intention to perform the behavior in question. Perceived behavioral control reflects past experience and anticipated barriers plus facilitators (McMillan & Conner, 2003). The planned behavior
Smoking attitudes
model has been successfully applied to the prediction of many health behaviors, including smoking. As Ajzen (1991) suggested, this model is open to expansion, and considerable research has been conducted to ascertain the utility of adding additional variables to the model, such as past behavior. One meta-analysis indicates that past behavior significantly contributes to the prediction of later behavior (Oullette & Wood, 1998). Some studies treated past behavior as a measure of habit but most studies suggest that past behavior is an independent measure (e.g. Hu & Lanese, 1998; Rhodes & Courneya, 2003). Prediction of intention to quit smoking was significantly improved when past behavior was added (Hu & Lanese, 1998), but few studies have included past smoking behavior or its initiation in adolescence. However, past behavior explained additional variance in smoking but not intention in a sample of schoolchildren (McMillan, Higgins & Conner, 2005). Knowledge refers to the amount of information that accompanies one’s attitude and has often been mentioned as an important factor for understanding attitude-behavior consistency (Krosnick, Boninger, Chuang, Bernet, & Carnot, 1993). Researchers added knowledge in planned behavior theory, as for Greek adults who showed that intention toward eating habits was predicted, among others, by knowledge (Bebetsos, Theodorakis & Chroni, 2001). The present purpose was to examine if there were differences between adolescents and adults in intention to smoke using the theory of planned behavior as a predictive model when past behavior and information were included. Method Participants
Smoking attitudes
There were 391 participants (157 male, 231 female, 3 missing); 209 were young adults (66 male, 141 female, 2 missing) and 182 were secondary students (91 boys, 90 girls, 1 missing). They ranged from 13 years to 36 years (M=18.2, SD =4.2 yr.); the mean age for young adults at a Greek University was 22.5 yr. (SD=2.9) and for adolescents 15.4 yr. (SD=1.2).
Measures Attitudes toward smoking, Intention to smoke, Perceived Behavioral Control, and Subjective Norms, variables from Planned Behavior Theory questionnaire were present in the questionnaire and also used in similar studies in Greece (Theodorakis, 1992; 1994; Theodorakis, Natsis, Papaioannou, & Goudas, 2003). Attitude toward smoking was assessed on the mean six bipolar adjectives, and higher scores indicated more positive attitudes. Cronbach’s alpha was .80 in this sample. Intention was assessed on the mean of three items using a 7-point scale, for which lower scores indicated less intention to smoke (Cronbach alpha was .92). Perceived Behavioural Control on smoking behavior was assessed by the mean score of 3 items using a 7-point scale of agreement for which higher scores indicated less perceived control. Cronbach alpha was .62. Subjective Norms (mean of three items) was scored for agreement so higher scores indicated that significant others approved smoking. Cronbach alpha was .60. Knowledge was based on the work of Krosnick et al. (1993), assessed as the mean for agreement on four items, and Cronbach alpha of .86. Higher scores indicated that the participant perceived self as being better informed about smoking.
Smoking attitudes
Past behavior was assessed by “have you ever smoked, even one or two puffs?”. Answers were given as “yes” or “no”. The question was adopted from Sorensen et al. (2004) and used for the Greek population in Theodorakis & Hassandra (2005). Results One hundred fifty six (74.6%) adults reported that they had smoked in the past even one or two puffs and fifty three (25.4%) reported that they had never smoked. On the other hand, fifty one adolescents (28%) reported that they had smoked in the past even one or two puffs and one hundred and thirty one (72%) had never smoked not even one or two puffs. The difference between adults and adolescents was significant (χ2=84.87, p
