Smoking in Adolescence: : Images and Identities

Citation

McWhirter, J. (1998), "Smoking in Adolescence: : Images and Identities", Health Education, Vol. 98 No. 6, pp. 242-243. https://doi.org/10.1108/he.1998.98.6.242.1

This book promises to be of “practical interest to teachers, youth workers, health professionals, as well as parents and psychology students”. Beginning with an introduction which defines adolescence and problem behaviour theory, the bulk of this book describes two research projects carried out in Sussex and in London in the 1990s with pupils aged 11 to 17 years.

The authors go on to describe their rationale and methodology for the studies which include quantitative approaches, including questionnaires and social class analysis, and qualitative approaches, such as focus groups and family interviews.

Several chapters are devoted to a detailed description of the results, which are helpfully presented so that comparisons may be drawn between different contexts: urban versus rural, for example. These chapters cross‐refer to many other studies of adolescent smoking behaviour, a factor which should certainly commend the book to students. Also helpful are the descriptions of different kinds of teenage smokers ‐ initiators, experimenters, never smoked, occasional and regular smokers. These descriptions provide a useful reminder to teachers and health promoters that within any class or subset of the adolescent population there will be a multitude of target groups who might need a variety of different kinds of intervention including prevention advice, reinforcement, relationship skills, alternative means of stress relief, and weight control, as well as health information.

Perhaps the most fascinating sections of the book are the chapters devoted to the more qualitative aspects of the study. In these sections we overhear young people in conversation about cigarette smokers and smoking and learn how smokers and smoking are perceived by adolescents of the mid 1990s.

It emerges that adolescents have complex and rational reasons for smoking or not smoking which match their developmental and psychosocial needs. Far from lacking information about smoking, these young people are aware and can articulate the social and psychological factors which are weighed against the health advice they receive at home, in school and through the media. The decision to smoke or not has become an important factor in adolescent identity formation.

As well as presenting evidence for smoking as a factor in self image and personal identity, this book de‐bunks the myth of peer pressure as a “cause” of adolescent smoking. Instead, peer choice is recognised as one factor in a web of decision‐making processes more complex than those suggested by social‐psychological models beloved of health promotion textbooks.

But is this book really of practical interest to such a wide range of readers? Parents, if educated to degree level or beyond, might find it helpful to reflect that teenagers make rather more active and informed choices than an understanding of the smoking “risk factors” might suggest. Curriculum developers will find the evidence supporting a spiral curriculum in smoking education valuable. Health promoters will certainly be challenged to reassess their models of health‐related behaviour found in the standard textbooks.

But if the kind of practical help you need is classroom strategies for developing relationship skills and ideas for mass media campaigns to deter young people from smoking, you will be disappointed.

This book is strong on theory, evidence and the authors’ reflections on the meaning of the evidence. That is quite enough for one book, and it can be recommended on that basis.