ABSTRACT. The purpose of this study was to compare the amount of information sent by the speaker, received and retrieved by the listener in inter-and intra-cultural conversations. Three hypotheses were tested: (1) in their conversations, inter-cultural interactants would communicate signi®cantly less information than intra-cultural interactants with other variables held constant, (2) the two inter-cultural conditions would not be dierent from each other in terms of the amount of information communicated, and the same would be true with the two intra-cultural conditions, and (3) in their conversations, the speakers in inter-cultural conditions would send the same amount of information as speakers in intracultural conditions given that all speakers would pass a test on the materials they were going to present. Participants were 40 Canadian and 40 Chinese university students, and they were randomly assigned to one of the four experimental conditions. Each dyad engaged in two medical conversations, which were videotaped upon the consent of the participants. The nature of the conversations resembled physician-patient face-to-face interactions. Results from written tests immediately following the conversations provided strong support for Hypothesis 1 and 2, and results from viewing the videotapes provided partial support for Hypothesis 3. In relation to the amount of information sent by the speakers, listeners in inter-and intra-cultural conditions retrieved only 50% and 75% of the information respectively. Based on the ®ndings, one may argue that inter-cultural communication differs signi®cantly from intra-cultural communication in the amount of information Int. J. Intercultural Rel. Vol. 23, No. 3, pp. 387±409, 1999 # 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved Printed in Great Britain 0147-1767/99 $ -see front matter PII: S0147-1767(99)00003-6 www.elsevier.com/locate/ijintrel *The author would like to thank Dr Ronald Hoppe for helpful comments on the manuscript and for support in completing this study; Dr Janet Bavelas, for crucial guidance in designing and conducting the experiment; Dr Michael Bond for enlightening suggestions on the design of the experiment; Drs Lorne Rosenblood, Bruno Zumbo, Peter MacMillan, Cindy Hardy, and Pat Konkin, and Trudy Johnson, for statistical consulting and helpful comments on the manuscript; and all the participants, for their time and eorts in making this study possible.Finally, the author would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for insightful comments. *University of Northern British Columbia, Department of Psychology, 3333 University Way, Prince George, B.C. Canada V2N 4Z9, Canada. Tel.: +250-960-6502; Fax: +250-960-5536.; E-mail: lih@unbc.ca This research is based in part on the author's doctoral thesis presented to the Department of Psychology at the University of Victoria. An earlier version of this article was presented at the 45th Annual Conference of the International Communication Association, Albuquerque, New Mexico, May 25±29, 1995. 387 communicated in situat...

Among the 347 physicians surveyed, 58% of the male physicians and 18.8% of the female physicians were current cigarette smokers; 54.4% of the male and 70.4% of the female physicians often or always provided smoking cessation counseling for patients; 37.5% of the physicians thought that for a Chinese smoker, cigarette smoking served as a social lubricant; 31.5% thought it a habit; 21.7% thought it a stress reliever; and 9.2% thought it a social status symbol. The following 5 variables were significantly associated with physicians' smoking cessation counseling frequency: their smoking status, perceived success in their past counseling, perceived influence, perceived exemplary role, and perceived responsibility. To increase physicians' smoking cessation counseling, the Chinese Ministry of Health would need to discourage physicians to smoke and appeal to their sense of responsibility to help patients quit smoking.

The purpose of this study was to assess the association of receptivity to pro-smoking media and cigarette smoking among adolescents in China and updating data on smoking prevalence and typology. Data were collected from a random sample (n=553) of vocational high school students in Wuhan, China, with a response rate of 99%. Media receptivity was assessed using the Adolescent Tobacco Media Receptivity Scale (ATMRS, score range of 1-4). Smoking typology including habitual smokers and chippers, and smoking prevalence in one day, two days, one week, one month, two months, six months and one year were assessed. Reported smoking was verified using exhaled carbon monoxide. It was found that the initiation rates of smoking were 71.3% for boys and 27.4% for girls with 45% of the boys and 6.3% of the girls smoking in the past 30 days. Of the smokers, 40.7% were self-stoppers and 29.6% were chippers. The mean ATMRS score was 2.45 (SD=0.83) with boys scoring higher than girls. ATMRS scores were significantly associated with initiation and after-initiation smoking assessed at various durations. Findings of this study imply that Chinese youth are highly receptive to pro-tobacco media. Social marketing against tobacco advertising should be adopted as an important strategy for tobacco control in China. In addition, the period of 30-day appears to be an optimal choice to assess cigarette smoking as conventionally used in past research.

Purpose -The goal of the special issue is to review current cigarette smoking trends in China; this article aims to provide an overview of the main themes of the special issue. Design/methodology/approach -The instruments for data collection of the five studies in this special issue are surveys. One study used a random sampling method, one used an intercept survey method, and three used a convenience sampling method. Findings -Highlights of the findings include: among the 677 physicians surveyed, 31.6 percent of the men and 0.9 percent of the women were current smokers; 79.2 percent of the cigarette users reported smoking on duty; 15 percent of the cigarette users smoked in front of patients. Sixty-one percent of the physicians often advised patients to quit smoking. Two factors significantly influenced a physician's anti-smoking frequencies: whether they were smokers themselves and whether they had received training on helping patients to quit smoking. About half of the 269 patients surveyed reported seeing someone smoking inside the hospital, and 22.3 percent had seen physicians and/or nurses smoking. Among the 758 medical students surveyed, 26.5 percent of males and 1.6 percent of females had smoked in the previous 30 days. Practical implications -The exclusive coverage of a western journal on cigarette smoking in China can draw the attention of Chinese and western scholars in the field, as well as the attention of the Chinese Ministry of Health, to this major national problem. This attention should help to advance anti-smoking educational campaigns in China. Originality/value -This is the first special issue by a western academic journal on cigarette smoking in China, where rates are far higher than in most other parts of the world, and are a major health concern. Two studies have large sample sizes and all five studies have high response rates.