Chronic diseases, such as cardiovascular diseases and
cancers are considered nowadays the main cause of
mortality and morbidity among Jordanians.1 Tobacco
smoking has been identified as one of the avoidable risk
factors for the development of these chronic diseases.
In Jordan, smoking is not only common among adults,
but also among adolescents, and the recent Global
Youth Tobacco Surveillance2 showed that 13.2% of male
students, and 7.1% of female students between the ages
of 13 and 15 were current smokers. Similar to the case
in some Arab countries3 most available studies on youth
smoking in Jordan have only presented data on the
prevalence of smoking and some distal determinants. Since
a good understanding of smoking-related beliefs reinforce
the effectiveness of smoking prevention interventions,3,4
data on youth beliefs on smoking are required. This study
aims to compare the well-known smoking related beliefs
associated with Western adolescent smokers with that of
Jordanian adolescents, likewiseto describethe prevalence of
cigarette smoking, and to analyze the differences in beliefs
on cigarette smoking between smokers and non-smokers.
The theoretical framework of this study is the
Integrated Model of Behavioral and Motivational Change
(I-Change Model),5 which aims to explain why people
engage in unhealthy behaviors. The model categorizes the
factors that contribute to a certain behavior into 3 phases:
pre-motivational, motivational, and post-motivational.
AccordingtotheI-ChangeModel,behaviorsaredetermined
by people’s intention to executethem. Intention, in turn, is
determined by 3 well-defined motivational factors, namely
attitudes, perceived social influences, and self-efficacy
expectations.Attitude(the product ofindividuals’ outcome
expectations)reflectstheindividuals’evaluationofexpected
advantages, and disadvantages of certain behavior. Social
influences include social norms (the norms on a behavior
from others), social modeling (perceived behavior of
others), and social support/pressure (support in favor, or
pressure against a particular health behavior asexperienced
from others). Lastly, self-efficacy (individual ability to carry
out the desired behavior) presents in varied forms, such
as social self-efficacy and stress/emotional self-efficacy. The
focus of this study was to identify the main motivational
beliefs besides intention toward cigarette smoking.