Razi Journal of Medical Sciences

  Background: The prevalence of smoking among teenagers is increasing and. The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of an educational intervention on empowering high school students in Hamadan city for prevention of smoking.

  Methods : In this quasi-experimental study which has done during 2010-2011, a trial of 240 boy students of third year of high school of Hamedan were selected by multi-stage cluster sampling and divided into experimental and control groups of 120 people randomly. Data was collected by standard questionnaires on self-esteem, problem solving, self- control and self-efficacy and a checklist for prevention of smoking behavior. According to preliminary results from the completed questionnaires and the checklist, an appropriate educational intervention was designed and implemented in the experimental group. One month after the intervention, data were collected from two groups and were compared analyzed by SPSS (version16) through statistical tests.

  Results: Before intervention, behavior of prevention of smoking and mean scores of self-esteem, self-control, self-efficacy and problem solving skills in the two groups were moderate and two groups were not significantly different. After intervention, mean scores for self-esteem, self-control (p = 0.003), efficacy (p =0 .014) and problem solving (p =0.001) revealed significant differences between the two groups and there was significant difference between smoking prevention behavior in the two groups (p =0 .02).

  Conclusions: The educational intervention improves the students’ self-esteem, self-control, self-efficacy and problem solving and improves their smoking prevention behavior