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The effectiveness of a fifteen session psychosocial smoking prevention strategy was tested on 902 seventh graders from seven junior high schools in suburban New York over 2 years. The prevention program was implemented by regular classroom teachers and consisted of a cognitive component dealing with the immediate consequences of cigarette smoking, a decision-making component, a relaxation-training component, a social skills training component, and a self-improvement component. In addition to testing the overall effectiveness of this approach, the relative efficacy of two different scheduling formats was compared and the extent to which "booster" sessions conducted during the year after completion of the program helped to maintain reductions in new smoking was also examined. Results indicated that the prevention program was able to reduce new cigarette smoking by 50% at the end of the first year and by 55% at the end of the second year for the intensive format condition. New regular cigarette smoking was reduced by 87% in the second year for the students in the booster condition. Significant changes consistent with nonsmoking were also evident on several cognitive, attitudinal, and personality variables.

These findings provide useful information on the physician-learner's perception of needs, which is important in the design of effective continuing education efforts in geriatrics.

Recent studies of smoking prevention have utilized procedures designed to motivate adolescents to provide truthful self-reports by convincing them that their smoking status can be verified by an independent (“bogus”) measure. The current study evaluated the effectiveness of three “bogus-pipeline” procedures hypothesized to increase the validity of self-reported cigarette smoking among 646 seventh graders from two suburban New York City schools. A second aim was to determine the extent to which “bogus-pipeline” procedures targeted specifically at cigarette smoking can indirectly increase the validity of self-reports of alcohol and marijuana use. Over-all, the observed bogus-pipeline effects were modest. Of the three procedures, both the video tape and cartoon presentation modes resulted in a slightly higher percentage of self-reported smoking behavior; only the cartoon presentation mode resulted in a higher percentage of drinking behavior. A reverse effect was observed for self-reported marijuana use in which subjects in the non-bogus-pipeline (control) condition reported significantly more marijuana use than those in the three bogus-pipeline conditions, suggesting overreporting in this population. It appears the validity of adolescents' self-reports may vary from population to population and from behavior to behavior in relation to the perceived social desirability of the specific behavior measured.

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