"We had thought that parents quitting late might serve as a recent model of behavior that their children could remember and emulate, but our data did not show a significant result for late quitting," Bricker said. One possible explanation, he said, was lack of statistical power in their data; there simply were not enough young-adult quitters whose parents were late quitters enrolled in their study.
"Scientists should look into the late-quitting question," Bricker said. "It is conceivable that parents' late quitting may also help young adults quit, but we simply did not find any significant result for the question."
The findings are based on data collected from 1,553 Washington families that included at least one parent with a history of regular smoking and a child who smoked at least weekly by 12th grade. The students in the study were part of the landmark Hutchinson Smoking Prevention Project, the largest and longest school-based intervention trial ever conducted in smoking-prevention research, involving nearly 8,400 students and 600 teachers throughout 40 school districts in Washington. The National Cancer Institute funded the research.
Information on parents' smoking behavior was collected when the children were in the third grade (8 or 9 years old) and again at 11th grade (16 or 17 years old). Information on the children's smoking behavior was collected when the children were in 12th grade (17 or 18 years old) and again two years after high school.
"This study is unique because it is the first prospective study to follow a large group of parents and children over time to examine whether parents' quitting behavior might be related to their young-adult children quitting smoking," Bricker said.
However, Bricker cautions that only a rando
'"/>
Contact: Kristen Woodward
kwoodwar@fhcrc.org
206-667-5095
Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center
1-Mar-2005