Perception, intention and attempts to quit smoking among Jordanian adolescents from the Irbid Longitudinal Study

OBJECTIVE: To describe important tobacco cessation indicators among adolescent smokers from Irbid, Jordan. METHODS: Participants for this study were selected from the Irbid Longitudinal Study of Smoking Behaviour (2008-2011). A total of 1781 students were enrolled at baseline from 19 of 60 randomly selected schools (participation rate 95%). Only students who reported current smoking at baseline were included in the study (n = 605). RESULTS: Among the study participants, 74.3% wanted to quit smoking, 64.2% tried to quit and 68% believed it was easy to quit at any time. Attempts to quit smoking were significantly more frequent among boys than among girls for cigarettes (boys 72% vs. girls 45.2%) and waterpipes (boys 71.7% vs. girls 53.5%). More girls (55.2%) than boys (28.6%) wanted to quit waterpipe smoking because they believed that it was harmful to health (P < 0.001) and because smoking among children was unacceptable to their families (P = 0.003). CONCLUSIONS: Most of the students in this cohort wanted and tried to quit smoking. They believed it was easy to quit smoking whenever they wanted. Health concerns in boys and girls, and family opposition to smoking among girls were barriers to continued smoking.