Problem/Objective: White adolescents smoke at higher rates than African American adolescents. Yet, African American adults have higher smoking rates than white adults. This study explored the differences in how African American and white adolescents represent knowledge about smoking to try to understand these discrepancies.

Methods: In the first stage, 40 white and 40 African American adolescents listed their beliefs about smoking. The set of beliefs yielded 79 unique beliefs. A second set of 37 white adolescents and 80 African-American adolescents sorted the beliefs into piles based on the perceived similarity of the items.

Results: The pile sort data were converted to dissimilarity data and then analyzed using hierarchical cluster analysis. There were 5 unique clusters of beliefs for white adolescents (health concerns, negative affective reactions, social sanctions, social identity, and positive reasons for smoking). There were 9 unique clusters for African American adolescents (health concerns, addiction, negative affective reactions, negative images of smokers, social aspects of smoking, positive affect and smoking, stress/negative affect, commitment to not smoke, and social sanctions).

Conclusions: African American adolescents had more complex knowledge structures regarding smoking. White adolescents' structure reflected primarily positive versus negative reactions to smoking. However, specific types of affect seem to play a more important role for African American adolescents' knowledge about smoking. For example, there is a very salient link between negative affect (stress and depression) as reasons to smoke for African American adolescents. Understanding these knowledge structures can assist in targeting messages to prevent smoking in these populations.