The role of weight concern and self-efficacy in smoking cessation and weight gain among smokers in a clinic-based cessation program
Section snippets
Subjects
Subjects were 122 participants (66% female) in a smoking-cessation program, recruited through newspaper advertisements. Eligible subjects were those who were regular, daily smokers over the age of 18. They averaged 43.6 years of age (SD = 9.7), and 14.8 years of education (SD = 2.0). The ethnic composition was 55% Caucasian, 39% African-American, and 3.3% Hispanic. Subjects smoked an average of 23.3 cigarettes per day (SD = 12.7) of moderate nicotine strength (M = .85 mg, SD = .33) and had a
Preliminary analyses
Women reported significantly higher levels of concern about postcessation weight gain both at baseline (M = 5.7, SD = 2.1) and end of treatment (M = 6.1, SD = 3.3) than did men at baseline (M = 3.9, SD = 2.0; t = −4.22, df = 107, p < .0001) and end of treatment (M = 3.2, SD = 2.9; t = −4.36, df = 97, p < .0001). There were no significant differences in the mean level of weight concern between Caucasians and African-Americans at either baseline (t = .08, df = 101, ns) or at week 7 (t = .01, df =
Discussion
The aims of the present study were to (1) examine the role of weight concern in the prediction of smoking and weight outcomes; (2) establish the domain specificity of self-efficacy; and (3) assess the mediational role of self-efficacy in the relationship between weight concern and smoking and weight outcomes. Overall, the results suggest that self-efficacy is best assessed as a domain-specific construct, and concern about postcessation weight gain prospectively predicts weight, but not smoking
Acknowledgements
This research was partly supported by NHLBI Grant RO1-HL42485 and was presented in part at the 16th Annual Meeting of the Society of Behavioral Medicine, San Diego, CA, 1995. We thank David Abrams, Daniel Cervone, Lawrence Grimm, Michele Kelley, Bess Marcus, David McKirnan, Raymond Niaura, and William Shadel for their valuable comments.
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2021, Obesity MedicineCitation Excerpt :In fact, cross-sectional studies show that former smokers gain weight commensurate to the duration of their abstinence from smoking (Flegal et al., 1995), reaching a mean of 13 pounds at 1 year (Jarvis et al., 2007) and 21 pounds over 5 years (Eisenberg and Quinn, 2006). On the other hand, weight gain during smoking abstinence actually may predict smoking relapse and is mediated by self-efficacy which is the personal judgment of how well or poorly a person is able to cope with a given situation (Borrelli and Mermelstein, 1998). Thus, it suggests that the psychological challenges surrounding smoking cessation, more than the smoking abstinence itself, may ultimately contribute to weight gain.