Psychosocial determinants of cigarette smoking among college students

Although the prevalence of cigarette smoking among adolescents and adults consistently declined in the past decade, smoking among college students rose sharply. To reduce the morbidity and premature mortality caused by smoking, antismoking interventions need to target this vulnerable population. Anonymous self-report data were collected from a convenience sample of 224 college students who voluntarily completed a Web-based survey developed to assess the relation of risk-taking tendency, depression, social normative beliefs, and smoking resistance self-efficacy to cigarette smoking behavior. Employing structural analysis using LISREL (Jöreskog & Sörbom, 1996), all 4 factors were confirmed as determinants of smoking. Resistance self-efficacy, the only direct antecedent, mediated the link to risk-taking tendency, depression, and social normative beliefs. Antismoking interventions that focus on enhancing refusal skills and are delivered to homogeneous groups are proposed as an effective approach to reducing cigarette smoking among college students.