Effects of smoking simulation technology intervention on middle school students' attitudes about smoking

This study tested an interactive smoking prevention program's effectiveness in influencing middle school students' attitudes toward smoking cigarettes before and after participating in the ySTART® Program. The ySTART® Program is an innovative educational product to educate teenagers about the physical, emotional, financial, and social consequences of tobacco addiction. Thirteen schools located in the Northeast, West, and Midwest were randomly assigned to one of four study groups: (1) the full ySTART program, (2) a weekend simulation with the PreventPak simulator or ySTART, (3) their school's tobacco education curriculum only, and (4) no tobacco education. A Web-based Smoking Survey was given to 471 students at the baseline and after the intervention at a one month interval. The study was double-blind to avoid potential bias of results. The data analyst was not informed of intervention group assignment in the data until the analysis was completed. The analyses included the McNemar's test and Cochran-Mantel-Haenszel (CMH) test of differences among the four study groups. The Bonferoni correction criterion adjusted the p-values for multiple statistical tests. Results showed that students who participated in the full ySTART® Program and the weekend simulation with PreventPak improved significantly more in attitude, beliefs, knowledge, smoking intentions, and level of self-control concerning a smoking addiction than students who attended school's tobacco education curriculum only or had no tobacco education. It was concluded that ySTART® Program is an effective educational tool in influencing middle school students' attitudes toward smoking and may be suitable for middle school health education curricula.