Knowledge of Health Effects and Intentions to Quit Among Smokers in India: Findings From the Tobacco Control Policy (TCP) India Pilot Survey

Genevieve C. Sansone, Lalit J. Raute, Geoffrey T. Fong, Mangesh S. Pednekar, Anne C. K. Quah, Maansi Bansal-Travers, Prakash C. Gupta and Dhirendra N. Sinha
Additional contact information
Genevieve C. Sansone: Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West, Waterloo, Ontario N2L3G1, Canada
Lalit J. Raute: Healis Sekhsaria Institute for Public Health, 601/B, Great Eastern Chambers, Plot No. 28, Sector 11, CBD Belapur, 400 614, Navi Mumbai, India
Geoffrey T. Fong: Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West, Waterloo, Ontario N2L3G1, Canada
Mangesh S. Pednekar: Healis Sekhsaria Institute for Public Health, 601/B, Great Eastern Chambers, Plot No. 28, Sector 11, CBD Belapur, 400 614, Navi Mumbai, India
Anne C. K. Quah: Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West, Waterloo, Ontario N2L3G1, Canada
Maansi Bansal-Travers: Roswell Park Cancer Institute, Elm and Carlton Streets, Buffalo, NY 14263, USA
Prakash C. Gupta: Healis Sekhsaria Institute for Public Health, 601/B, Great Eastern Chambers, Plot No. 28, Sector 11, CBD Belapur, 400 614, Navi Mumbai, India
Dhirendra N. Sinha: School of Preventive Oncology, A/27, Anandpuri, West Boring Canal Road, 800001, Patna, Bihar, India

IJERPH, 2012, vol. 9, issue 2, 1-15

Abstract: Awareness of the health risks of smoking is an important factor in predicting smoking-related behaviour; however, little is known about the knowledge of health risks in low-income countries such as India. The present study examined beliefs about the harms of smoking and the impact of health knowledge on intentions to quit among a sample of 249 current smokers in both urban and rural areas in two states (Maharashtra and Bihar) from the 2006 TCP India Pilot Survey, conducted by the ITC Project. The overall awareness among smokers in India of the specific health risks of smoking was very low compared to other ITC countries, and only 10% of respondents reported that they had plans to quit in the next six months. In addition, smokers with higher knowledge were significantly more likely to have plans to quit smoking. For example, 26.2% of respondents who believed that smoking cause CHD and only 5.5% who did not believe that smoking causes CHD had intentions to quit ( ? 2 = 16.348, p

Keywords: health risks; smoking; health knowledge; quit intentions; India (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/9/2/564/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/9/2/564/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:9:y:2012:i:2:p:564-578:d:16146

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().