Developmental trajectories of smoking and perceived intelligence: A longitudinal study from early adolescence to young adulthood

Objective: The current longitudinal study examined the associations among perceived intelligence, perceived health, in developmental trajectories of smoking across early adolescence and into young adulthood. Methods: We also fitted a five-predictor logistic model to investigate the relationship among perceived intelligence, age, gender and perceived health for non-smokers group. The participants included (N = 6495) individuals from the first four waves of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) data ages from 12 to 34 years. Longitudinal multilevel modeling and logistic regression modeling with categorical predictors were used for all data analyses. Results: As hypothesized, perceived intelligence and perceived health scores were significantly higher on the years smoking score was lower. Logistic regression results showed that the higher perceived intelligence scores, the less likely it is that an individual would be a non-smoker. Conclusion: Perceived intelligence was found as a protective factor for smoking behavior. The results may provide new insights into future studies on intervention programs for smoking to increase individuals' current level of well-being and health.