Assessing the impact of the national ‘truth’ antismoking campaign on beliefs, attitudes, and intent to smoke by race/ethnicity

Abstract

The findings suggest that the individual items comprising the indices may be less meaningful for some non-white groups of youth. Analyses of intention to smoke indicated that, among those who had never smoked, there were greater odds of not intending to smoke when examining all youth together without stratifying by race/ethnicity; however, a statistically significant effect was found only for the African American group when examining the effect by race/ethnicity. Among those who had ever smoked, a statistically significant effect was found for most racial/ethnic groups. This is a rich area for further research and is potentially critical to the success of future efforts to reach youth through behavior change messages.