How much unsuccessful quitting activity is going on among adult smokers? Data from the International Tobacco Control Four Country cohort survey

ABSTRACT Aims  To document accurately the amount of quitting, length of quit attempts and prevalence of plans and serious thought about quitting among smokers. Design  We used longitudinal data from 7 waves of the International Tobacco Control Policy Evaluation Four Country Survey (ITC‐4). We consid...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Addiction (Abingdon, England) England), 2012-03, Vol.107 (3), p.673-682
Main Authors: Borland, Ron, Partos, Timea R., Yong, Hua-Hie, Cummings, K. Michael, Hyland, Andrew
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Abstinence
Addiction
Addictive behaviors
Adolescent
Adult
Adult and adolescent clinical studies
Adults
Aged
Australia
Bias
Biological and medical sciences
Canada
Cohort Studies
Estimation
Female
Humans
Intention
International
Male
Medical sciences
Memory effects
Methodology (Data Collection)
Middle Aged
Patient Acceptance of Health Care - psychology
Patient Acceptance of Health Care - statistics & numerical data
Prevention and actions
Prognosis
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychopathology. Psychiatry
Public health
Public health. Hygiene
Public health. Hygiene-occupational medicine
quit attempts
rates of quitting
Recurrence
relapse
Residence Characteristics
Smoking
Smoking - psychology
Smoking cessation
Smoking Cessation - psychology
Smoking Cessation - statistics & numerical data
Smoking Prevention
socio-demographic effects
Surveys
thoughts about quitting
Time Factors
Tobacco
Tobacco smoking
Tobacco, tobacco smoking
Toxicology
U.S.A
United Kingdom
United States
United States of America
Young Adult
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:ABSTRACT Aims  To document accurately the amount of quitting, length of quit attempts and prevalence of plans and serious thought about quitting among smokers. Design  We used longitudinal data from 7 waves of the International Tobacco Control Policy Evaluation Four Country Survey (ITC‐4). We considered point‐prevalence data and cumulative prevalence over the 7 years of the study. We also derived annual estimates of quit activity from reports of quit attempts starting only within more recent time‐frames, to control for biased recall. Setting  Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States. Participants  A total of 21 613 smokers recruited across seven waves. Measurements  Reported life‐time quit attempts, annual quit attempts, length of attempts, time since last attempt started, frequency of aborted attempts, plans to quit and serious thought about quitting. Findings  Around 40.1% (95% CI: 39.6–40.6) of smokers report attempts to quit in a given year and report an average of 2.1 attempts. Based on free recall, this translates to an average annual quit attempt rate of 0.82 attempts per smoker. Estimates derived only from the preceding month to adjust for recall bias indicate an annual rate of approximately one attempt per smoker. There is a high prevalence of quit‐related activity, with more than a third of smokers reporting thoughts or actions related to quitting in a given month. More than half the surveyed smokers eventually succeeded in quitting for at least 1 month, and a majority of these for over 6 months. Conclusions  Smokers think a great deal about stopping and make many unsuccessful quit attempts. Many have been able to last for extended periods and yet they still relapsed. More attention needs to be focused on translating quit‐related activity into long‐term abstinence.
ISSN:0965-2140
1360-0443
DOI:10.1111/j.1360-0443.2011.03685.x