The overall poorer performance of high-risk groups is attributed to high exposure to cigarette smoking, which reduces a smoker's chances of successful cessation. In particular, high-risk groups are by definition more likely to be exposed to smoking by peers, but are also less likely to work in workplaces with smoking bans, which are shown to have a substantial impact on prevalence. Results suggest that for mass media campaigns to be more effective with high-risk groups, they need to be combined with other incentives, and that more prolonged interventions should be considered.

The effect of the 2005 British Columbia (BC) smoking cessation mass media campaign on a panel (N = 1,341) of 20-30-year-old smokers' attitudes is evaluated. The 5-week campaign consisted of posters, television, and radio ads about the health benefits of cessation. Small impacts on the panel's attitudes toward the adverse impacts of smoking were found, with greater impacts found for those who had no plans to quit smoking at the initial interview. As smokers with no plans to quit increasingly recognized the adverse impacts of smoking, they also increasingly agreed that they use smoking as a coping mechanism. Smokers with plans to quit at the initial interview already were well aware of smoking's adverse impacts. Respondents recalling the campaign poster, which presented a healthy alternative to smoking, decreased their perception of smoking as a coping mechanism and devalued their attachment to smoking. Evidence was found that media ad recall mediates unobserved predictors of attitudes toward smoking.

Data from the Canadian Workplace and Employee Survey (1999–2002) is used to assess the take-up of family-friendly benefits provided by employers. We distinguish benefit availability from the actual use of benefits and are able to account for worker selection into firms. We find that selection is important to understand the take-up of family-friendly benefits and that there is little difference between genders regarding benefit use. Overall, it seems that some family-friendly benefits (like flexible time) are relatively little help in the management of work-family conflict, while others (like childcare or eldercare) are unavailable to those who would benefit from them the most.

No abstract