Learning Objectives: Understand how to develop new, or enhance existing, smoking cessation interventions for adolescents by having a clearer understanding of how they perceive their experience with the quitting process.
Abstract: Research has thus far failed to assess the cessation process among adolescents from their perspective. Cessation programs need this information in order to tailor interventions to the unique needs of teenagers. This presentation reports on the first qualitative study to examine adolescents’ actual experience with quitting smoking from their perspective. The research involved interviews with a sample of about 100 high school students recruited in New York City who report that they either have or have not been successful at quitting. Data were obtained from focus groups and one-on-one interviews with the teenagers and analyzed using grounded theory methods. The oral presentation will report on findings pertaining to: (1) the factors that adolescent smokers say influence them to decide to try to quit smoking; (2) how they define quitting and success at quitting, (3) the factors that they say make it more difficult or easier for them to quit, (4) the people they tell about their plans to quit and the reaction they receive (e.g., support and opposition to quitting), and (5) the strategies that they use to succeed in overcoming obstacles to stop cigarette smoking. The presentation will discuss various themes in each of these areas, illustrating them with statements made by the teenagers in audio and videotaped interviews. The study is ultimately intended to help (a) researchers and practitioners gain more insight into the quitting process as it is experienced by teenagers, and (b) develop cessation interventions that are grounded in the empirical reality of young people.
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