Experience of Adolescents Smoking Cessation : Use of Focus Group interview

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to identify the experience of smoking cessation in middle and high school students who smoked or were ex-smokers. Method: Data were collected through focus group interviews with 3 groups (15 students), and were analyzed according to the analytic method of Morgan (1998) and Krueger(1998). Results: Six categories were identified. They included reasons to quit smoking, efforts to maintain smoking cessation, lures to start smoking again, improved self-esteem after overcome temptations, frustration following repeated failures in attempts to quit smoking and suggestions to help maintain smoking cessation. Through these results, it was found that reasons for quitting smoking were different from those of adults, strategies to maintain smoking cessation were limited and repeated failure in attempts to quit smoking led students to give up attempting to quit smoking. Conclusion: A high percentage of adolescent smokers want to quit but are unsuccessful in doing so. Considering the results of our analysis, smoking cessation programs and strategies should be carefully developed to be more effective in help adolescents quit smoking and maintain smoking cessation.