Effects of Motivational Interviewing in a High School Smoking Cessation Program

Underage smoking continues to be a major health-related concern among the United States teenage population. Although several programs, including public service announcements, have been introduced as a way to stymie the growing trend and to spread awareness of the dangers associated with smoking, it is clear that more needs to be done. The use of motivational interviewing has been shown to be effective in a variety of settings to include smoking cessation programs. In the proposed project, the use of repeated measures design will be used to examine the effects of a motivational interviewing program on high school-aged adolescents. Based on preliminary investigations of interventions similar to the one proposed, it is hypothesized that rates of smoking behavior among the adolescent projects participants will decrease; thus, bringing about positive health-related changes.