The Effectiveness of a Smoking Cessation Intervention Program Based upon a Process Model of Health Motivation

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the effect of participation in a health motivation-based intervention program on college students’ smoking behavior. One hundred and seventy smokers (mean age = 19.0 years, 151 males) from nine colleges and universities in Chengdu, China were randomly assigned to one of 5 groups that received between one and four sessions of the intervention, or no intervention. The intervention sessions included sequential activities based on the stages of the process model of health motivation. Each group completed questionnaires assessing health motivation and smoking behaviors at pre-test, immediately post-intervention, and at one month follow-up. Analyses indicated that the intervention program did improve participants’ health motivation, and that was associated with reduced levels of smoking relative to baseline. The greater the number of sessions, the greater the reduction in smoking.