The Impact of a Videotape on Smoking Cessation among African-American Women

Abstract

The African-American female smokers identified stress, pleasure, and addiction as the reasons that they smoked. These reasons were similar to those provided by the other smokers. The African-American female smokers reported greater addiction to nicotine than the other smokers, as indicated by greater incidence of smoking within 30 minutes of waking. The African-American female smokers also identified with the characters depicted in the videotape more strongly than did the other smokers. African-American female smokers identified behavioral coping strategies as those that they would use in their quit attempts more frequently than did the other smokers. Cessation rates were similar for the African-American females and other smokers. Although low, the 9.7% reported cessation rate, or the 4.6% conservative cessation rate estimate, is higher than the 3% 3-month quit rate observed among a group of 50 African-American female smokers living in South-Central Los Angeles during the same time period who were not participating in a quit-smoking program. Therefore the present data suggest an effect above mere testing.