Do self-help interventions in health education lead to cognitive changes, and do cognitive changes lead to behavioural change?

Objectives. The present study examined the extent to which self-help interv entions change specific cognitions and the extent to which changes in such cognitions are related to behavioural changes. Design. A randomized field experiment with follow-ups after 2 weeks and 3 m onths. M Method. Smokers (N = 1546) were randomly assigned to one of four conditions offering smoking cessation self-help materials containing (1) outcome info rmation, (2) self-efficacy enhancing information, (3) both sores of informa tion, or (4) no information. Results. First, with regard to behavioural effects, only self-help interven tions that included self-efficacy enhancing information were more effective than no information. Second, with regard to the cognitive changes, the dat a showed that outcome information led to increase in expected positive outc omes but also to increases in self-efficacy expectations, Further, self-eff icacy-enhancing information led to increases in self-efficacy. Third, diffe rent cognitive changes between T1 and T2 were related to different types of quitting activity at T3 in different groups of smokers. Conclusions. Some types of information lead to specific cognitive changes, while other types have more generalized cognitive effects. Further, cogniti ve changes produced by a serf-help intervention predict future quitting act ivity.