Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.
The Joint Committee on Research into Smoking, set up by the Social Science Research Council and the Medical Research Council, recommended in their Report in 1978 that a new study should be undertaken of attitudes towards smoking, and, in particular, of the relationship between such attitudes and smoking behaviour. The recommendation stressed that the new study should go beyond the conventional range of attitude surveys and probe smokers' motivation in some detail. The Department of Health and Social Security accepted this recommendation and commissioned the Social Survey Division of the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys to undertake such a survey. The main aim of this survey was to explore the attitudes and beliefs that determine the intention to smoke or not to smoke and how such intentions might determine subsequent behaviour.
Main Topics:
Attitudinal/Behavioural Questions Smokers: number of cigarettes/cigars, amount of tobacco smoked daily and weekly, type (tar-level), whether informant knows tar-level, changes in type or number of cigarettes smoked, reasons for changes, experience of giving up or attempting to give up and reasons, degree of dependency, likelihood of trying and succeding in giving up, cutting down, or carrying on smoking, attitudes towards price of cigarettes, amount of money needed to live in comfort, experience of money worries, physical health and confidence assessment, belief in risks to health through smoking, whether most friends and relatives smoke, attitude to medical advice on giving up smoking, to smoking in company of non- smokers or in non-smoking areas. Ex-smokers: social aspects of giving up smoking (whether alone, whether told others of intention, whether encouraged or not by relatives and friends), degree of difficulty experienced in giving up, length of time of discomfort, whether respondent feels better or worse for giving up, likelihood of smoking again, whether bothered by other people smoking. All: attitudes towards cigarette advertising and degree of awareness of advertisements. Background Variables Weekly income, educational background (electoral register sample only), brand names used by smoking respondents, household composition, employment history and status.
The General Household Survey was used as an initial sampling base. It was decided to interview all the smokers identified by the first quarter of the 1980 GHS and to solve the problem of the relative scarcity of young and non-manual smokers by adding to these all smokers aged 16-24 and/or all smokers whose head of household was coded non-manual found in the second and third quarters of the 1980 GHS. To these were added a new sample derived from the same 168 areas covered by the first quarter GHS. From the electoral register in each of these areas, eight addresses were selected to provide interviews with more smokers and with the smaller sample of non- smokers we required. In this way it was expected that a sample of about 3,000 smokers and 1,000 non-smokers and ex-smokers together would be obtained. The special sample of smokers including the extra numbers of young and non-manual smokers however, gives the equivalent analytical power with respect to social group membership in terms of age, sex, and social class of a simple random sample of 8,000 smokers or 19,000 members of the general population aged 16-66 or even 23,000 members of the adult population.
Face-to-face interview
Postal survey
Self-completion
