Evaluation of interventions to reduce smoking

This paper reports some of the findings from a large-scale (N = 4970) longi tudinal study evaluating the efficacy of two types of school-based interven tion designed to discourage cigarette smoking in children between ages of n ine and thirteen. The interventions were in the form of a Theatre in Health Education (THE) programme. and a school smoking policy which involved chan ges in adult behaviour. The research adopted a quasi-experimental design, f ollowing children from primary to secondary education where necessary over a period of two and a half years. Five waves of questionnaire data were col lected with biochemical markers in the form of saliva samples which served as a ''bogus pipeline". Though absolute levels of smoking were low, the fin dings indicate a weak positive effect over the longer term of both interven tions on smoking behaviour (past and current) for girls but no such effect for boys. Conversely, then was no impact for girls on a measure of intentio n to smoke, although a small long term effect was found for buys in the The atre in Health Education intervention group; Effects of the interventions o n targeted psychological variables were also minor: Possible reasons for th ese effects are discussed.