Need to consider motivation
While many theories have addressed attitudes
about tobacco use, most do not consider sufficiently the
importance of one’s motivation to learn new skills and
follow through with quit attempts [11,12]. While most
research on changing motivation to improve health has
been conducted with adults, work has begun with teens
and young adults as well, particularly in the arenas of
teen drug abuse cessation [11,12] and cigarette smoking
cessation [13,14]. There are at least two components of
motivation to quit tobacco use: direction/goal and effort/
energy [13]. First, tobacco users consider "why" they
should not continue to engage in tobacco use (direction).
As noted by Miller and Rollnick [12], "a discrepancy
[made explicit] between present behavior and important
goals will motivate change" (p. 58). Faced with
salient discrepancies, the person may change his/her
behavior to be better able to achieve desired goals. For
example, a teen smoker may realize, or be educated to
realize, that good health is important to help one maximize
one’s performance in school, that smoking is interfering
with good health, and that one may need to
quit smoking to help increase school performance.
The second component of motivation involves
considering how much effort or energy youth are willing
to expend to change their behavior. While unattained
goals tend to reflect discrepancies between perceptions
of possible and present behaviors or events, the energy
component reflects sources of "pushes" or "pulls" to
achieve the different goals. As examples, one may become
aware of pressure from family, friends, or future
employers to quit smoking. Also, one may feel capable,
or be educated to feel capable, of sustaining subjective
discomfort of nicotine withdrawal symptoms.