Knowledge, attitudes and practices regarding smoking cessation among Chinese affiliates of women’s organisations in Hong Kong

Abstract

Volunteers and staff of women's organisations who are highly active in engaging and providing community service can be recruited to motivate female smokers to quit. We described the knowledge and attitudes regarding tobacco control and smoking cessation among these affiliates in Hong Kong and identified factors associated with the practices of cessation interventions. Eight of 14 women's organisations joining the Women Against Tobacco Taskforce agreed to participate. All staff, volunteers, and members of the eight organisations were invited to complete a self-administered anonymous questionnaire during July and August 2006. A total of 623 out of 771 (80.8%) affiliates responded. Their knowledge on smoking and health (mean = 3.91, SD = 1.44 on a range of 0-7), smoking related diseases (mean = 2.91, SD = 0.97 on a range of 0-4), and women-specific diseases (mean = 2.93, SD = 1.87 on a range of 0-6), was considered to be inadequate. They had positive attitudes towards tobacco control (mean = 3.31, SD = 0.55) and their own role in smoking cessation counselling (mean = 3.19, SD = 0.56) on a 4-point Likert scale and 39.3% reported had attempted to offer quitting advice. Logistic regression analysis found that participants having direct contact with smokers who had a positive attitude towards their own role in smoking cessation counselling (OR = 2.57; 95% CI = 1.67-3.95) and better knowledge of smoking and smoking-related diseases (OR = 1.35; 95% CI = 1.06-1.71) were more likely to provide cessation counselling after controlling for gender; knowledge on smoking and health, and women-specific diseases; attitude towards tobacco control, negative and positive attitudes towards female smokers, and perceived self-efficacy in smoking cessation counselling. Women's organisations showed limited support towards tobacco control and their affiliates had a limited knowledge on smoking and health but had positive attitudes. Appropriate training, capacity building and establishing rapport with women's organisations are needed to promote smoking cessation and to support tobacco control in the community.

Association between employer’s knowledge and attitude towards smoking cessation and voluntary promotion in workplace: a survey study

“…The items were regarded as most commonly misunderstood concept of smoking, cessation and SHS, generated by a panel of experts in the research team based on their substantial SC promotion experience. Similar items have been used in previous studies to test the knowledge of the personnel who engaged in SC promotion programme [ 9 , 10 ]. Employers rated the items on a 4-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly agree) to 4 (strongly disagree) and were considered as having a correct response if he agreed/ strongly agreed to a correct statement or disagreed/ strongly disagreed with an incorrect statement.…”

The Cognitive Mediation Model: Factors Influencing Public Knowledge of the H1N1 Pandemic and Intention to Take Precautionary Behaviors

“…Empirical studies on the knowledge-attitude-practice sequence have shown that people gain knowledge which predisposes them to attitudes that motivate them to practice a certain behavior (Leung, Chan, Fu, & Lam, 2010;Okobia, Bunker, Okonofua, & Osime, 2006;Wang, Huang, & Knerr, 2010). Several theories such as the theory of planned behavior (Ajzen, 1991) and the health belief model (Rosenstock, 1974), which relied on the knowledge-attitude-practice sequence, have also highlighted the role of knowledge as a precursor to the formation of attitudes and practices.…”

Knowledge, Attitude and Practice towards Smoking among International Islamic University Malaysia Kuantan Communities

“…The mean and standard deviation for knowledge, attitude and practice scores were 21.8 ± 3.45, 86.1 ± 13.7 and 12.6 ± 4.75, respectively. Majority or 63.5% (73) of the respondents have good knowledge scores (22-26) regarding smoking while 34.8% (40) and 1.7% (2) had moderate (11)(12)(13)(14)(15)(16)(17)(18)(19)(20)(21) and poor (0-10) knowledge levels respectively. Only 1.7% 2…”

“…The study in Hong Kong found similar results as they identified woman had positive attitudes towards tobacco control program. 17 They even concluded that the positive attitude leads to successful law enforcement of anti-smoking in their country. In the present study, the attitude of females was higher than males may be because of the nature that smoking is more prevalent in males.…”