Findings You Can Use

This section provides "at a glance" research findings that can be used by our members who care about the clean indoor air initiative in Missouri.

Article information
Siegel, M., Albers, A. B., Cheng, D. M., Hamilton, W. L., & Biener, L. (2008). Local restaurant smoking regulations and the adolescent smoking initiation process. Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine, 162(5), 477-483. [Read more]

Findings At a Glance:
When creating interventions to prevent youth smoking, DON'T:

Lump all stages of smoking initiation into one.
Treat all youths the same: older youths (18-21) will be less susceptible to messages than younger ones (12-17 years).
Assume that all societal and individual-level factors have similar influence on all stages of smoking initiation.

Instead, DO:

Recognize that there're three different stages of smoking initiation: 1) nonsmoking, 2) experimentation and 3) established smoking.
Target youths ages 12 to 17 because they appear to be most susceptible to public policy interventions.
Target a specific factor and its influence on a specific stage of smoking initiation. Example: adult smoking at home influenced youth's experimentation with cigarettes but not their progression from experimentation to smoking.

Article information
Gagne, L. (2008). The 2005 British Columbia Smoking Cessation Mass Media Campaign and short-term changes in smokers attitudes. Journal of Health Communication, 13, 125-148. [Read more]

Findings At a Glance:
When creating smoking cessation campaigns, DON'T:

Put all smokers in one category as they may be in different stages of thinking about quitting.
Focus only on changes in health attitudes as your objectives.

Instead, DO:

Keep in mind that smokers fall in different stages of thinking about quitting.
Keep in mind that addiction to smoking and smoking being used as a coping mechanism are important factors for whether someone will quit.
Show smokers healthy and fun alternatives for coping with stress.
Show smokers how their behavior harms other people.
Target smokers' concern about bad breath while being respectful.

Article information
Green, M. P., McCausland, K. L., Xiao, H., Duke, J. C., Vallone, D. M., & Healton, C. G. (2007). A closer look at smoking among young adults: Where tobacco control should focus its attention. American Journal of Public Health, 97(8), 1427-1434. [Read more]

Findings At a Glance:
When developing smoking cessation interventions for young adults, DON'T:

Limit your interventions to accessible or receptive populations (pregnant women, military personnel, college students).

Instead, DO:

Target socially disadvantaged young adults, who have a higher prevalence of smoking.
Use the marketing techniques of the tobacco industry for better results: promote your program at bars, nightclubs and sporting events.
Use these same venues for programs and policies for reducing secondhand smoke, establishing social support for smoking cessation and distributing cessation aids to non-college-educated young adults.
Create worksite interventions focusing on the service and blue-collar industries, which employ many non-college-educated young adults. Worksites may also foster social support networks for those trying to quit.

Article information
Andersen, P. A., Buller, D. B., Voeks, J. H., Borland, R., Helme, D., & Bettinghaus, E. P. (2007). Predictors of government officials' support for youth tobacco control policies. Journal of Public Health Management Practice, 13(6), 621-629. [Read more]

Findings At a Glance:
When lobbying city/county officials for tobacco youth access restrictions, DON'T:

Spend the same time and effort on everybody.
Use the same message on everybody.
Start your lobbying efforts without researching your target officials.

Instead, DO:

Determine which officials would be most supportive of particular policies, based on the study's major findings, and target them.
Once you locate those officials, create information campaigns to reinforce their beliefs that tobacco use is harmful and tobacco use by minors is a big problem.
Show these selected (supportive) officials that they belong to a group of like-minded officials and voters in their community.
Target the Hispanic officials as they are more supportive of certain tobacco-restriction policies. To that end, strive to build a coalition with diverse cultural and social backgrounds.
Involve officials in your anti-tobacco community events, as that makes them more likely to support future policies.

Article information
Gerrard, M., Gibbons, F. X., Lane, D. J., & Stock, M. L. (2005). Smoking cessation: social comparison level predicts success for adult smokers. Health Psychology, 24(6), 623-629. [Read more]

Findings At a Glance:
When designing smoking cessation interventions, DON'T:

Ignore the psychological factors that may predict cessation success, such as comparison level and favorability towards the smoker image.

Instead, DO:

Create interventions that promote constructive ways of coping with cessation and prevent the natural tendency to shift towards a low comparison mode.
Promote identification with upward comparison targets who are succeeding with the cessation and coping well.
Encourage smokers to consider aspects of the prototypical smoker that are negative and, most important, different from the self, in order to facilitate distancing from this image.
Encourage smokers to contemplate about people who are successfully quitting as a way to facilitate identification with nonsmokers.

Article information
Yanovitzky, I., Stewart, L. P., Lederman, L. C. (2006). Social distance, perceived drinking by peers, and alcohol use by college students. Health Communication, 19(1), 1-10. [Read more]

Findings At a Glance:
When creating normative anti-smoking messages, DON'T:

Relate your message to a general peer group because this group is versatile and includes different types of peers and your target audience may not relate to it.

Instead, DO:

Relate your messages to best friends and friends rather than to general peers whenever possible.
Reduce perceived social distance from other on-campus peers by increasing school-based social identity. Thus a message suggesting that students of all group affiliations (gender, race, religion, fraternity, etc.) on campus support a non-smoking campus or want to quit may be more effective on a diverse campus.
Give information about normative peers or peers other than friends and best friends from whom most students on campus perceive the least social distance.
Create micro-level interventions which focus on one-on-one peer interactions and other interpersonal strategies in conjunction with a media campaign. Such micro-level activities include decision-making simulation games, discussions with non-smokers and smokers about smoking, examination of personal smoking-related choices in class as part of the curriculum, classes in which students designed social norms messages promoting clean air to their peers. Such interventions may reduce misperceptions regardless of perceived social distance.

Article information
Cohen, E. L., Shumate, M. D., & Gold, A. (2007). Anti-smoking media campaign messages: Theory and practice. Health Communication, 22(2), 91-102. [Read more]

Findings At a Glance:
When creating anti-smoking persuasive messages, DON'T:

Rely exclusively on messages that target individual attitudes but use a variety of messages to increase effectiveness.
Talk about the severe consequences of smoking without offering self-efficacy messages.

Instead, DO:

Use messages that focus on social norms and behavioral modeling.
Use messages that challenge a person's perception of social norms toward risky behaviors.
Use messages that bolster self-efficacy.
Mention both benefits and barriers of quitting and barriers to create more realistic expectations of the audience.

Article information
Moran, S., Wechsler, H., & Rigotti, N. A. (2004). Social smoking among U.S. college students. Pediatrics, 114(4), 1028-1034. [Read more]

Findings At a Glance:
When targeting college smokers, DON'T:

Assume they all have the same smoking patterns.
Use the same messages for all college smokers because they perceive smoking differently.

Instead, DO:

Keep in mind that half of college smokers are social smokers, i.e. they smoke mainly when with others.
Aim at eliminating tobacco from college settings such as bars, parties, student housing, sports games, etc., because they encourage social smoking.
Make social smokers realize they are "smokers" even if they don't do it regularly.
Raise awareness among social smokers that they risk becoming nicotine dependent or regular smokers.
Raise awareness among social smokers that even occasional smoking increases the risk of tobacco-related diseases and they need to quit. Make them understand that there is no safe level of smoking.

Article information
Malone, R. E., Wenger, L. D., & Bero, L. A. (2002). High school journalists' perspectives on tobacco. Journal of Health Communication 7(2), 139-156. [Read more]

Findings At a Glance:
When targeting high school journalists, DON'T:

Use the message that smoking is strictly for adults, because that will make cigarettes more desirable by adolescents.
Use the "kids" frame (catch phrases such as "underage smoking," "we card," or "tobacco-free kids") because findings suggest it may not be effective for mobilizing youth resistance to the tobacco industry.

Instead, DO:

Focus on further refining frames that are easily communicated, consistently used, compatible with the developmental tasks of adolescents, and difficult for the tobacco industry to subvert.
Draw youth into the tobacco control policy discourse as active participants because the issue attracts their attention and they tend to be supportive of it.
Use a variant of the "kids" framing that is developed by youth themselves, focuses on industry manipulation, and is unaccompanied by moralizing statements such as "underage kids shouldn't smoke, it's an adult custom" because such remarks have the opposite effect.

Article information
Ling, P. M., & Glantz, S. A. (2002). Using tobacco-industry marketing research to design more effective tobacco- control campaigns. Journal of the American Medical Association, 287(22), 2983-2989. [Read more]

Findings At a Glance:
When targeting consumers with anti-tobacco advertising campaigns, DON'T:

Use just demographic characteristics such as age, gender, race, education the way pubic health officials do because these data, while important, often don't tap into why people smoke and how they can be influenced to quit.
Ignore nonsmokers in your campaigns as they can be strong allies against smoking.
Ignore former smokers as they can offer unique perspectives and messages.
Forget the places where the tobacco industry has the strongest presence.

Instead, DO:

Use marketing techniques similar to those of the tobacco industry - define your target groups by consumer behavior rather than demographics. Make the studying of attitudes, lifestyles, aspirations, activities of smokers and nonsmokers key to your process.
Use nonsmokers as allies in your anti-smoking campaign as they can undermine the social acceptability of smoking.
Use former smokers as a source of social pressure to encourage current smokers to quit.
Use messages that expose the tobacco industry's manipulation as that decreases the social acceptability of smoking, provokes young people's rebelliousness and is effective for both teens and adults.
Create messages that would appeal to the same segments of young adults that the tobacco industry is targeting.
Focus your tobacco-control efforts at places where young people adopt new behaviors and the tobacco industry has therefore established a strong foothold - work, military service, college, bars/clubs, sporting/racing/music events.

Article information
Andersen, P. A., Buller, D. B., et al. (2006). Predictors of support for environmental tobacco smoke bans in state government. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 30(4), 292-299. [Read more]

Findings At a Glance:
When lobbying public officials about a smoke-free ordinance, DON'T:

Use the same time and effort on everybody.
Ignore the fact that a large group of officials (42%) don't see secondhand smoke as a serious problem.

Instead, DO:

Select and lobby only those officials who would be most receptive and have the highest odds of supporting an ordinance.
Support, educate, and lobby public officials who have smoked less than 100 cigarettes in their lifetime and who also believe that secondhand smoke and tobacco are serious problems for their community, local government should get involved with people's smoking decisions and smoking cessation programs for public employees are beneficial.
Educate all officials on the science behind smoke-free ordinances and the health hazards of secondhand smoke as 42% of them don't think it's a serious problem.
Counter the misinformation from the tobacco industry through educational campaigns targeting public officials and propel them to act in the public interest.

Article information
Ahrens, D., Uebelher, P., & Remington, P. L. (2005). Evaluation of community and organizational characteristics of smoke-free ordinance campaigns in 15 Wisconsin cities. Preventing Chronic Disease, 2(3). [Read more]

Findings At a Glance:
When organizing your campaign for a smoke-free ordinance, DO:

Recruit a community coalition with high levels of prior political experience.
Pay early and sustained attention to local media and get editorial support as that influences politicians and opinion leaders.
Get high print media coverage throughout the campaign as that legitimizes your efforts and informs the community about the risks of secondhand smoke.
Identify and activate supporters in the community and encourage them to contact their elected officials.

When organizing your campaign for a smoke-free ordinance, DON'T:

Underestimate the political strength of the opposition.
Worry about the characteristics of your community (smoking levels, political affiliation, and income) because what matters more for success are the characteristics of your campaign and the skills of your coalition.

Article information
Hays, S. (2006). Secondhand tobacco smoke and municipal smoke-free ordinances: Attitudes of restaurant and bar owners and managers. Journal of Drug Education, 36(4), 279-295. [Read more]

Findings At a Glance:
When targeting restaurant and bar owners about a smoke-free ordinance, DON'T:

Wrap your education campaign only around the health effects of secondhand smoke because business owners are well aware of them.

Instead, DO:

Introduce a broader education campaign that addresses the futility of managing indoor cigarette smoke through air purifiers and other devices.
Focus heavily on providing economic impact information (specifically regarding the lack of economic impact) because unfounded fears of economic loss are behind owners' reluctance to become smoke free.
Publicize the fact that collectively, the majority of restaurants and bars favor a city-wide smoke-free policy as that may help to establish a community norm supportive of such a policy, perhaps even among those who are considered as opponents.

Article information
Hawkins, K., & Hane, A. C. (2000). Adolescents' perceptions of print cigarette advertising: A case for counteradvertising. Journal of Health Communication, 5(1), 83-96. [Read more]

Findings At a Glance:
When creating anti-smoking ads, DO:

Make adolescents aware that tobacco advertisers intentionally select attractive models, inviting settings, and exciting activities to capture their attention. This should help them understand and resist the appeal of these ads.
Make adolescents aware that tobacco advertisers intentionally create slogans and enduring images to make their messages more memorable.
Help adolescents reject the implied association between smoking and rewards (fun, sophistication, adventure, etc.) by showing them that the two are unrelated.
Remind adolescents that smoking is undeniably associated with often severe negative consequences (e.g., decreased lung capacity, stained teeth, bad breath, peer rejection, high price of cigarettes, long-term negative health consequences) despite advertisers' failure to depict them.

When creating anti-smoking ads, DON'T:

Create one-size-fits-all ads for all your audiences. Keep in mind that smokers and non-smokers will interpret your ads differently, as well as smokers from different ethnic backgrounds.
Forget to get input from your target audience when creating your ad.

Article information
Goldman, L. K., & Glantz, S. A. (1998). Evaluation of Antismoking Advertising Campaigns. Journal of the American Medical Association, 279(10), 772-777. [Read more]

Findings At a Glance:
When creating anti-smoking ads, DO:

Use industry manipulation as one of your main messages. It helps adults redirect their guilt over smoking toward anger at the tobacco industry. It helps youths see that by smoking they are not acting independently and making their own decisions, but instead are manipulated by the tobacco companies.
Use secondhand smoke as one of your main messages. It denormalizes smoking and heightens interest in the issue in both smokers and nonsmokers.
Use addiction and cessation messages sparingly and mainly in combination with, or rotated with, the industry manipulation and secondhand smoke strategies because they have mixed effects.
Create ambitious, hard-hitting, explicit, and in-your-face ads, which can compare with the ads of the tobacco industry.

When creating anti-smoking ads, DON'T:

Use youth access because some adults misinterpret the message or don't think anything can be done about it. Also, it can send a mixed message to youth by showing them how to obtain cigarettes and can reinforce the tobacco industry's advertising by portraying smoking as an adult activity.
Use short-term health effects because youth misunderstand the message.
Use long-term health effects because most youth already know the potential health hazards but feel invulnerable as they live in the present. In terms of both short and long term effects, youth believe that they don't smoke enough to suffer any negative consequences or they will quit before the cigarettes harm them.
Use romantic rejection because both youth and adults find the message offensive and superficial, while youth nonsmokers see a person's smoking status as irrelevant if the person is attractive.
Refer to the tobacco industry by "they" or "them" but give specific names. Only 10% of teenagers understood who "they" refers to, while a majority thought "they" referred to their friends or peers. Many even thought the ads promoted smoking.

Article information
Biener, L., Ji, M. Gilpin, E., & Albers, A. (2004). The impact of emotional tone, message, and broadcast parameters in youth antismoking advertisements. Journal of Health Communication, 9(3), 259-274. [Read more]

Findings At a Glance:
When creating anti-smoking ads for youths, DO NOT:

Rely too much on humorous or normative ads, as they are less effective and memorable than illness related ads.
Wear out your audience with highly emotional ads.

Instead, DO this:

Use fear or sadness in thought-provoking and believable messages about the serious long-term consequences of smoking.
Use high emotions sparingly - while emotions can increase the effectiveness of your ad, too much of them can have
the opposite result.
Keep in mind the differences in recall and perceived effectiveness between boys and girls, younger and older youths, those than own tobacco promotional materials and those that don't.

Article information
Beaudion, C. (2002). Exploring antismoking ads: appeals, themes and consequences. Journal of Health Communication, 7(2), 123-127. [Read more]

Findings At a Glance:
When creating anti-smoking ads, DO:

Focus on short-term health consequences because those have bigger effects on youths.
Focus on social consequences because youths are concerned with dating, socializing and their peers' opinions.

When creating anti-smoking ads, DON'T:

Use long-term health goals for youth audiences because young people already know about the potential health hazards of smoking but they live in the present and feel invulnerable. So these messages don't work for them.
Use fear appeal with youths, because they are not effective. Young people view death and disease as long-term concerns so they violate the time perspective of youth.
Use romantic rejection because it's not effective for either youth or adults.
Use the cessation theme with youths, it only works for adults.

Article information
Agostinelli, G., & Grube, J. (2003). Tobacco counter-advertising: a review of the literature and a conceptual model for understanding effects. Journal of Health Communication, 8(2), 107-127. [Read more]

Findings At a Glance:
When creating anti-tobacco ads, DO:

Use humor, good music, and lifestyle images when targeting youths.
Make sure the images and content of the ads are memorable because that increases the chance of influencing beliefs and behaviors.
Identify those anti-tobacco contents and styles that best capture attention and short-circuit defensiveness in smokers, so that the ads are well received by both young smokers and nonsmokers.
Use styles that are less judgmental and more factual as they are more likely to be objectively processed by smokers.

When creating anti-tobacco ads, DON'T:

Use judgmental tones in the ads because that will make smokers defensive and they will tune out.
Use messages that lead to negative self-implications for smokers because they will tune out.

Article information
Wolburg, J.M. (2006). College students' responses to antismoking messages: Denial, defiance, and other boomerang effects. The Journal of Consumer Affairs, 40(2), 294-323. [Read more]

Findings At a Glance:
When appealing to college students who smoke, DO NOT:

Use heavy-handed approaches (e.g., don't preach, don't judge)
Tell them what they already know (i.e., they already know that smoking is bad for their health)
Talk down to them
Tell them that smoking isn't "cool" (i.e., they believe smoking is cool and when you tell them it isn't, it makes them want to "light up")

Instead, DO this:

Provide thought-provoking ideas without blame, criticism or insult
Use positive, non-judgmental tones
Use a dual message approach that includes vulnerability and self-efficacy

Findings Archive

Findings You Can Use