Learning Objectives: Explain why girls begin to smoke.
Abstract: Evidence suggests that although the smoking rates for girls and boys are similar, 9.6% of boys and 8.8% of girls in middle school and 28.7% of boys and 28.2% of girls in high schools were smokers, their reasons for initiating the behavior differ. Smoking among adolescent girls has been found to be associated with efforts at emotional management.
This project uses participatory research techniques to develop antismoking messages for teenage girls 12-16 years of age. Snowball sampling, a peer network technique, is used to explore personal networks and social relationships, both of which are contributing factors in smoking initiation. The specific aims of the study are to: (1) determine how adolescent girls describe the process through which they have changed, or prevented the occurrence of, a behavior; (2) compare these self-descriptions of change and prevention with those found in the existing behavior change theories; (3) evaluate whether change strategies are associated with person characteristics such as self-efficacy; (4) determine how adolescent girls would urge others like themselves to not initiate smoking; (5) determine how messages based on participants’ perceptions differ from those based on existing theory; (6) develop and test antismoking messages based on adolescents’ descriptions of self and other change and prevention strategies. Conference participants will be able to explain why girls begin to smoke, how to prevent girls from smoking, and how girls describe behavior change.
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