The longitudinal relationship between smoking attitudes and behaviour: Which is guiding what?

Many prevention and intervention programmes focus on retaining or creating negative attitudes towards smoking in an attempt to prevent adolescents from smoking. Because of the central role of attitudes in these programmes it is essential to know whether smoking attitude actually precedes smoking behaviour, or is affected by it. In the present study we examined to what extent bi-directional relations existed between smoking attitude and behaviour. Data were used from the first three waves of the 'Family and Health' project, in which 428 full-families participated. Of each family, data were available from father, mother, a younger adolescent (aged M = 13.4 years, SD = .50), and a older adolescent (aged M = 15.2 years, SD = .60). There was an almost equal distribution of sex and academic level of the adolescents. Self-reports were used to assess adolescents' smoking attitudes and behaviours. Associations between smoking attitudes and behaviours were tested using Structural Equation Modelling. Results revealed that smoking attitudes were not consistently related to future smoking. However, past smoking was moderately related to future attitudes, suggesting that adolescents who start smoking develop less negative attitudes towards smoking. The current findings imply that smoking behaviour predominantly shapes the smoking-related attitude, rather than the other way around. These findings suggest that only focusing on smoking attitudes is not enough to prevent adolescents from smoking.