The relationship of smoking attitudes to the smoking behaviors of first and second year nursing students in a rural nursing program
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Date
1998
Department
Nursing
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Abstract
The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between the
smoking attitudes/beliefs and professional role attitudes of nursing students and
the smoking behaviors and year of formal nursing education in the program.
The findings may assist in understanding relationships between smoking and
nursing education.
The review of literature indicates that while nurses can make a difference
with minimal effort, smoking nurses are poor role models and provide little
education about smoking to clients. Cessation education is especially
important to rural family nursing since this brief teachable moment may be a
rare opportunity.
This study was a cross sectional descriptive survey using a demographic
tool and two questionnaires. The Smoking Attitude Questionnaire (Reeve,
Adams, & Kouzekanani,1996) measures attitudes towards Smoking related to
the nurse’s counseling clients to stop smoking and as related to role modeling
positive health. The Smoking and Women Questionnaire (Gulick & Escobar-
Florez,1995) measures behaviors/attitudes supportive of smoking cessation.
The study used a convenience sample of first and second year nursing
students in a two year community college nursing program.
Data analysis of six hypotheses involving variables of smoking behavior,
year, SAQ score, SWQ score, age, recent changes, and other smokers in the
household found no significance. A seventh hypothesis, that the SWQ score
was inversely related to smoking behavior, was found to be significant r=.370, p<0.1).
Findings from further analysis of the type of change (quit/decrease, no
change, increase/start) in smoking behavior compared to the presence of
another smoker in the household were significant (x2=7.207, df=2,
p=.207).
The presence of another smoker in the household had a significant association
with the student’s smoking behavior (x2=5.949, df=1, p=0.015). Based on the
findings of this further analysis, the type of change in smoking behavior and the
student's smoking behavior were significant with the presence of another
smoker in the household. These findings lend support for Bandura’s Social
Learning Theory and reciprocal determinism which were used as the theoretical
framework of this study.