Effectiveness of a social influence approach and boosters to smoking prevention

This paper presents the short-term and longterm results of a randomized smo king prevention trial. The purpose was to evaluate two smoking prevention p rograms, a social influence (SI) program and a SI program with an additiona l decision-making component (SIDM). Moreover, the contribution of boosters was assessed as well, Fifty-two schools were randomly assigned to the SI pr ogram, the SIDM program or a control group. Half of the treatment schools w ere randomly assigned to the booster condition; the other half did not rece ive boosters. Both programs consisted of five lessons, each lasting 45 min, and were given in weekly sessions in grades 8 and 9 of high schools in the Netherlands. The most successful program was the SI program with boosters which resulted in a significantly lower increase in smoking rates (5.6 and 9.7%, respectively) compared to the control group (12.6 and 14.9%, respecti vely) at both 12 and 18 months followup. The results suggest that boosters can be an effective tool for maintaining or increasing the effectiveness of smoking prevention programs, It is recommended that the SI program with th e booster be implemented at the national level, since this intervention sho wed the greatest behavioral effects.