Predictors Of Intention To Smoke Among Middle School Students

Theory of Planned Behavior is an effective theory to predict adolescent risk behaviors. Attitude towards the behavior, subjective norm and perceived behavior control are the predictors of behavior intention in Theory of Planned Behavior. Prototype/willingness model extended the Theory of Planned Behavior, adding descriptive norm, prototype, previous behavior and behavior willingness into Planned Behavior model. Behavior willingness not only can predict behavior intention, but also can predict behavior itself. This study tries to use Theory of Planned Behavior and Prototype/Willingness model to explain the intention to smoke among middle school students. According to open-end questionnaires and literature reviews, we developed the smoking attitude questionnaires, subjective norm control questionnaires, perceived behavior control questionnaires and prototype questionnaires which can measure the intention to smoke among Chinese middle school students, and tested the reliability and validity of these questionnaires. Those questionnaires above and the items of descriptive norm, previous behavior, behavior intention and behavior willingness are used to detect the theoretical hypothesis. Structural equation modeling was used to evaluate the predictive power of the Theory of Planned Behavior and Prototype/Willingness model, and construct an integrated model to predict smoking intention of Chinese middle school students. In the end, the status of middle school students'smoking behavior and the characteristics of middle school students'smoking intention were analyzed. The results of this study are as follow:(1) The self-made questionnaires has high reliability and validity, and it can be used to measure the middle school students'smoking intention.(2) The Theory of Planned Behavior can predict the intention to smoke among middle school students. Attitude and perceived behavior control can predict male students'smoking intention significantly, subjective norm can't predict their smoking intention significantly; perceived behavior control and subjective norm can predict female students'smoking intention significantly, attitude can't predict their smoking intention significantly.(3) We confirmed that the prototype willingness model can predict the smoking intention of Chinese middle school students. Attitude, prototype, descriptive norm, previous behavior and behavior willingness all can predict students'smoking intention significantly.(4) The integrated model can predict the smoking intention of Chinese middle school students effectively. Attitude, perceived behavior control, descriptive norm, previous behavior and behavior willingness can predict male students'smoking intention significantly; perceived behavior control, subjective norm, descriptive norm, previous behavior and behavior willingness can predict female students'smoking intention significantly.(5) The smoking intention was significantly different for different genders, grade and previous behavior.