Analysis of Relationships between the Factors of Personal Characteristics, Experiences, the Factors of Cognition and Affect Relating to Smoking Cessation Behavior

Oh, Hyun Soo

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to examine if individual characteristics and experiences related to smoking behavior identified from the literature were significantly associated with behavior-specific cognitions and affect in the same way as presented in Pender's Revised Health Promotion Model(Pender, 1996). The subjects selected for this study were 400 college students enrolled in more than 10 colleges located in Seoul and Kyunggi-Inchon province. According to the study results, personal factors (i.e., perceived health status, the past history of disease, and symptoms related to smoking) and related behavior (i.e., the degree of alcohol consumption, and exercise) are significantly associated with behavior-specific cognitions and affect (i.e., perceived barriers to smoking cessation, perceived self-efficacy, and perceived benefits of smoking cessation). The canonical correlation between two groups of variables was .59, and it turned out to be statistically significant. Thirty-four percent of variance of the relationship between two group of variables was explained by two canonical variates which turned out to be significant in the study results. The result could be interpreted from the view of psycho-social area as follows: overall, this study includes important variables which explain the association between two groups of variables.