Leonie Brose, Beatrice Gross, Anja Schumann, Sabina Ulbricht, Christian Meyer, Henry Völzke, Hans-Jürgen Rumpf and Ulrich John (2008) Reasons for not using smoking cessation aids. BMC Public Health, 8 (129). pp. 1-9. ISSN 1471-2458
Full text access: Open
Background: Few smokers use effective smoking cessation aids (SCA) when trying to stop smoking. Little is known why available SCA are used insufficiently. We therefore investigated the reasons for not using SCA and examined related demographic, smoking behaviour, and motivational variables. Methods: Data were collected in two population-based studies testing smoking cessation interventions in north-eastern Germany. A total of 636 current smokers who had never used SCA and had attempted to quit or reduce smoking within the last 12 months were given a questionnaire to assess reasons for non-use. The questionnaire comprised two subscales: "Social and environmental barriers" and "SCA unnecessary." Results: The most endorsed reasons for non-use of SCA were the belief to be able to quit on one's own (55.2%), the belief that help is not necessary (40.1%), and the belief that smoking does not constitute a big problem in one's life (36.5%). One quarter of all smokers reported that smoking cessation aids are not helpful in quitting and that the aids cost too much. Smokers intending to quit agreed stronger to both subscales and smokers with lower education agreed stronger to the subscale "Social and environmental barriers". Conclusion: Main reasons for non-use of SCA are being overly self-confident and the perception that SCA are not helpful. Future interventions to increase the use of SCA should address these reasons in all smokers.
This is a Published version This version's date is: 22/04/2008 This item is peer reviewed
https://repository.royalholloway.ac.uk/items/5c84b0fe-09e8-94c0-df1b-21bf2e5db0a3/1/
Deposited by Al Dean (ZSRA118) on 17-Mar-2010 in Royal Holloway Research Online.Last modified on 06-Jan-2011
© 2008 Gross et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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