Assessing attitudinal ambivalence towards smoking and its association with desire to quit among teen smokers
Most smokers have some conflicting thoughts and feelings about their smoking; that is, they feel ambivalent. Whether felt ambivalence can be adequately measured and then used to predict the desire to quit among teen smokers has yet to be explored. Hence, among 402 teen smokers involved in a smoking cessation intervention, we first examined the psychometric properties of an eight-item ambivalence scale via exploratory and confirmatory analyses. After excluding one item, the scale was internally consistent and formed a single factor. We also report on whether felt ambivalence towards smoking assessed at baseline and at four and eight months post-baseline was related to the desire to quit in cross-sectional and prospective analyses. In all cross-sectional and prospective analyses, smokers who felt increasingly ambivalent reported a stronger desire to quit. These results suggest that ambivalence might be a useful construct to explore further and experimentally induce to assess its effects on desire to quit. © 2005 Taylor & Francis Group Ltd.
Duke Scholars
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Related Subject Headings
- Clinical Psychology
- 5205 Social and personality psychology
- 5203 Clinical and health psychology
- 4206 Public health
- 1701 Psychology
- 1302 Curriculum and Pedagogy
Citation
Published In
DOI
EISSN
ISSN
Publication Date
Volume
Issue
Start / End Page
Related Subject Headings
- Clinical Psychology
- 5205 Social and personality psychology
- 5203 Clinical and health psychology
- 4206 Public health
- 1701 Psychology
- 1302 Curriculum and Pedagogy