Relationship Between Disengagement Beliefs, Anxiety Sensitivity and Barrier to Smoking Cessation Among Male Adults

Abstract

The present research aimed to investigate the relationship between disengagement beliefs, anxiety sensitivity and barrier to cessation among male adult smokers. Employing the technique of purposive convenience sampling data was collected from (N = 280) adult male smoker from the area of Rawalpindi and Islamabad. The age of pru1icipants, ranged between 18-55 years. Disengagement Beliefs Questionnaire (Dijkstra, 2003) was used to assess disengagement beliefs, Anxiety Sensitivity Questionnaire (Tylor et a!., 2007) was used to assess anxiety sensitivity and Barrier to Cessation Questionnaire (Macnee & Talsma, 1995) was used to assess barriers to cessation among male adult smokers. Cronbach alpha for Disengagement beliefs were .77. Anxiety sensitivity and its subscale ranged from. 70 to .86 whereas reliabilities of barrier to cessation scale and its subscale ranged from.74 to .90 respectively. Initially a qualitative inquiry phase was done. 70% of individual reported that they started smoking before the age of 18. On the average 64% people reported that they smoked above 11 cigarettes per day.76% reported that they preferred to smoke with their fri ends rather than smoking alone. 52% people reported that they have not tried to quit smoking. 61 % people reported difficulty to refrain from smoking. On the average 56% participants repOlted that they have more than five friends smoke cigarette. Results indicated that anxiety sensitivity, disengagement beliefs and barrier to cessation were positively related to each other. Result of multiple regression analysis indicated that anxiety sensitivity and disengagement beliefs positively predicted barrier to cessation. The overall model accounted for 21 % of variance. Results of mediation analysis indicated that anxiety sensitivity mediates the relationship between disengagement beliefs and barrier to cessation among male adult smokers. Additional findings indicated that adults with high anxiety sensitivity scored higher on disengagement beliefs and barrier to cessation. Moreover adults who scored high on barrier to cessation also scored high on anxiety sensitivity and disengagement beliefs. Mean difference indicated that adults whose parents smoked scored higher on disengagement beliefs as compared to adults whose parents do not smoke. Nonsignificant differences were observed on anxiety sensitivity and barrier to cessation along parental smoking status. Results were discussed in the light of existing literature. The present study found that hypothesized positive association among v disengagement beliefs, anxiety sensitivity and barrier to cessation. One implication of these findings is that counselling that effectively reduce anxiety sensitivity may result in decrease in disengagement beliefs and, to the extent that this occur, adult smokers may be more motivated to quit smoking.