Passive smoking in childhood: An intervention study and test of the theory of planned behavior.

This study compared the effectiveness of a minimal-contact passive smoking intervention in inducing parents who smoke to smoke outside (or continue to smoke outside), instead of inside, their home with the usual care offered at four pediatric pulmonary clinics. Ninety-two parents who smoked and whose children had bronchial asthma were allocated to either the treatment or control group. Parents' smoking behavior in the home was assessed by questionnaire and by measurement of cotinine in a sample of the child's urine. The experimental treatment consisted of the feedback of the child's cotinine level, a self-help manual based on behavior modification techniques and social learning theory, and a physician's message about the health effects of passive smoking. Parents in the control group received the usual care of the physician's message about the health effects of passive smoking. The feedback on the child's cotinine level and self-help manual were mailed to parents approximately one month after their enrollment into the study. Parents' smoking behavior in the home was reassessed three to five months later. Thirty-seven experimental and thirty-five control group parents remained in the study until posttest. Twenty-three percent of the treatment subjects who had smoked inside the home at pretest, compared with thirteen percent of the control subjects, reported smoking outside the home at posttest. Relapse rates for subjects who reported smoking outside the home at pretest were lower in the experimental group (17%) than in the control group (60%). These effects were not significant at the traditional statistical level of p $<$.05 for either the self-report (p =.27) or cotinine (p =.15) measure. The proportion of parents who reported trying to stop smoking in the home was significantly higher in the experimental group (chi-squared = 11.79, p $<$.001). These data were also used to test the Theory of Planned Behavior. Parents' attitudes toward the act, subjective norm and perceived control for smoking outside the home explained sixty-one percent of the variance in behavioral intention. Behavioral intention and perceived control explained sixteen percent of the variance in the behavior.PhDEducationHealth and Environmental SciencesHealth educationPsychologyPublic healthSocial psychologyUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/128764/2/9135652.pd