Abstract
Compensatory health beliefs (CHBs) are a means to cope with motivational conflicts between intended health goals and the temptation for an unhealthy behavior. As CHBs can fluctuate on a daily basis, this study examined how daily CHBs are associated with daily intention to quit smoking and daily number of cigarettes smoked before and after a quit date at the between- and within-person level. The study comprised a prospective longitudinal design and investigated 83 women and 83 men for 32 consecutive days during an ongoing joint self-set quit attempt. Daily CHBs varied from day to day and between individuals. At the between-person level, higher women’s mean CHBs were associated with lower intention (b = −0.23, p = 0.04) and at the 10% level with more cigarettes smoked after the quit date (rate ratio (RR) = 1.92, p = 0.07). At the within-person level, women’s higher than usual CHBs were unrelated to intention to quit, but were related to less smoking before (RR = 0.96, p = 0.03) and at the 10% level after the quit date (RR = 0.91, p = 0.09). A marginally positive association between daily CHBs and smoking at the within-person level emerged for men. The negative effect of daily CHBs at the between-person level on smoking seems to unfold after the quit attempt and for women only.
Highlights
People can apply different strategies that allow them to behave unhealthily such as smoking cigarettes without having a guilty conscience or feeling regrets
The aim of the present study was to test whether daily Compensatory health beliefs (CHBs) are associated with the daily intention to quit and daily number of cigarettes smoked during smoking cessation
Intra-class correlations (ICCs) of all main variables are displayed in Table 1 and ranged from
Summary
People can apply different strategies that allow them to behave unhealthily such as smoking cigarettes without having a guilty conscience or feeling regrets. CHBs are beliefs that an unhealthy, but simultaneously desirable behavior can be compensated for by engaging in another healthy behavior that has a positive effect on health. An individual would think that being physically active can compensate the negative effects of smoking cigarettes on health (cf [3]). In the context of smoking behavior, previous studies indicate that people with higher CHBs smoke more cigarettes [4] and have lower intention to quit smoking [5]. As quitting smoking, and the reduction of daily cigarette intake can have tremendous health benefits [6], the association between CHBs and smoking behavior changes should be further investigated, and is the focus of the present study
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