Validity and Reliability of a Self-Efficacy Instrument in Medically ill Smokers

The purposes are to: (a) investigate the psychometric properties of a modified version of Etter's Smoking Self-Efficacy Questionnaire (SEQ-12) in a sample of rural smokers with medical illness; and (b) evaluate potential relationships between individual and environmental factors related to quit attempts in this population. Smoking prevalence and rates of tobacco related illnesses are disproportionately high in rural communities. While cessation treatments have been extensively studied in healthy smokers, less is known about the cessation needs of smokers with chronic medical illness. Increasing knowledge about motivational factors that influence medically ill smokers' participation in tobacco cessation has the potential to assist in the development of more effective interventions with this subgroup, which can disproportionately benefit from cessation. A descriptive cross-sectional design was used to survey a population of 80 medically ill rural Kentucky smokers. The population is comprised of adult patients and their adult family members served by a free clinic in Central Kentucky and who are uninsured, have chronic medical illness(s) and whose incomes fall at or below 150% of the federal poverty level. Data collected on the self-report questionnaire include personal and social/environmental characteristics, tobacco dependency, smoking history including quit attempts, secondhand smoke exposure at home and in the community, social norms, self-efficacy, and dispositional optimism. Findings will support the validity of a newly developed, tailored questionnaire for measuring self-efficacy in medically ill, rural smokers.