Original ArticlesAnti-tobacco socialization in homes of African-American and white parents, and smoking and nonsmoking parents
Section snippets
Methods
Moderated focus groups were used to provide indepth information about adult smokers’ knowledge, attitudes, and practices. Twelve focus groups were completed prior to commencing a computer-assisted telephone survey of parents of children, ages 8 to 17 years. Information derived from the focus groups guided the content of the telephone survey.
Results
A total of 70 parents who smoked participated in the 12 focus groups. There were five African-American groups and seven white groups. The characteristics of the participants are shown in Table 1.
The response rate for the telephone survey was 86% (311 completed of 362 attempted). Reasons for noncompletion were: no age-eligible children in the household (n = 14), refused (n = 23), interrupted interview (n = 3), or telephone no longer in service (n = 11). The relatively high response rate may
Discussion
Compared to the African-American parents, the white parents reported lower levels of involvement in anti-tobacco socialization within the home. They were less likely to report setting household ground rules regarding teen tobacco use and communicating the rules to the children. The African-American parents were less likely than the white parents to believe that tobacco use is an inevitable part of growing up, and that parental interventions would have either no effect on teen use or make the
Conclusions
These data support the hypothesis that African-American parents feel more empowered to delay or prevent their children’s tobacco use than do white parents. The challenge facing tobacco control professionals will be to find ways to help empower all parents to become actively involved in safeguarding their children from this major health threat. In order to do so, parents must first be provided with more knowledge about the immediate and long-term health consequences of tobacco use in childhood,
Acknowledgements
This study was supported through an intramural grant program, the President’s Pioneer Award for Research.
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