Psychosocial correlates of adolescent cigarette smoking: Personality or environment

Abstract

Adolescent cigarette smoking is a problem of increasing magnitude in the Australian population, and programs based on psychological strategies designed to prevent the onset of smoking among adolescents have been universally disappointing in their capacity to achieve this outcome. Much of the blame for this may be attributed to a failure to comprehensively understand the psychosocial factors leading to the dis cretionary human behaviour of smoking. This study investigated a combination of such psychosocial factors in relation both to present adolescent smoking behaviour and to future intentions of adolescents to smoke. Data were collected from a large and representative sample of Australian adolescents attending high schools and secondary colleges in three Australian cities. The findings suggest that social context is a stronger correlate of both present and future intended adolescent smoking than is personality, though there are sex differences in the data which caution against the view that a single set of psychosocial variables is universally associated with smoking behaviour in all adolescents. Moreover, the data suggest that self-reported future intention to smoke is an unreliable indicator of smoking behaviour in the future. The results are discussed with particular reference to their potential to guide psychological strategies for adolescent smoking prevention.