Abstract
The current study sought to evaluate the main and interactive effect of health perceptions, smoking quit attempt history, and readiness to change with respect to depressive symptoms among college student smokers. The present data came from baseline data from a randomized trial and included 495 undergraduate students (Mage = 23.84, SD = 4.92, 47.47% female) who reported smoking at least 1 cigarette per day. A three-way interaction emerged between smoking quit attempt history, health perceptions, and readiness to change with respect to depressive symptoms. Quit attempt history was positively associated with depressive symptoms, particularly among individuals high in readiness to change if they perceived their health as poorer relative to peers; however, quit attempt history was negatively associated with depressive symptoms, particularly among individuals high in readiness to change if they perceived their health as comparable or better than that of their peers. These findings support the assertion that readiness to change, quit history and perceived health interact in a dynamic way to confer greater risk for poor outcomes including smoking- (e.g., cessation failure) and psychological-related outcomes (e.g., increased depressive symptoms). As such, development of informed interventions and programs targeting readiness to change to improve quit history and perceptions of health may provide unique benefit.
Highlights
The current study sought to evaluate the main and interactive effect of health perceptions, smoking quit attempt history, and readiness to change with respect to depressive symptoms among college student smokers
Analysis of variance (ANOVA) showed that gender, ethnicity, education, and marital status were not related to depressive symptoms
Drug use was higher among females (r = 0.11, < 0.05) and was positively related to alcohol use (r = 0.15, < 0.001)
Summary
The present data came from baseline data from a randomized trial and included 495 undergraduate students (Mage = 23.84, SD = 4.92, 47.47% female) who reported smoking at least 1 cigarette per day. Undergraduates were recruited for participation at a large university in Texas. The university was not a tobacco-free campus and had over 32,000 undergraduate and graduate students at the time of recruitment. Participants were considered eligible if they: 1) reported smoking at least one cigarette per day for six months; 2) were between the ages of 18–35 years; 3) had no contraindication to use of nicotine patch; and 4) had no friends or household members participating in the study. Participants were provided $10 gift cards in exchange for participation
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