The characteristics discussed above may themselves be inter-related – for example, the presence of children under 16 in the household is
probably confounded by the age of the smokers that is, older people are less likely than younger people to live in the same
household as children under 16. A statistical procedure, logistic regression, was therefore used in the analysis to identify the
influences that are independently associated with wanting to give up smoking.
4
Overall, smokers who were most likely to want to give up smoking were:
•
younger those aged 16–64 were two or three times as likely as those aged 75 and over to want to give up smoking;
•
aware of the effect of passive smoking on chest infections among children; and
•
aware of the effect of passive smoking on heart disease among adults.
3.2.2 Reasons for wanting to give up smoking
Those who wanted to give up smoking were asked why they wanted to do so and up to three answers were recorded. Just under nine out
of ten 86 smokers who wanted to quit mentioned at least one health reason as their reason for wanting to give up smoking:
•
68 of those who wanted to give up said it was because it would be better for their health in general;
•
30 said that giving up smoking would reduce their risk of getting a smoking related illness; and
•
16 because of health problems they had at present. After health reasons, the next most common reason given for
wanting to give up was a financial one – 28 could not afford to smoke or considered smoking as a waste of money. Sixteen per cent
said they wanted to give up because of family pressure and 13 because of the effect of smoking on children.
Men were more likely than women to say they want to give up smoking because it is better for their health in general 72 and
63 respectively. Conversely, women were more likely to be worried about the effect smoking has on children 16 of women
and 10 of men cited this as a reason for wanting to quit smoking. There was an increase in the percentage of smokers wanting to give
up smoking for financial reasons between 2000 and 2002. Overall, health was equally likely to be given as a reason regardless
of how much respondents smoked – indicating that the health
12
Figure 3.1
Whether smokers would like to give up smoking by age, 1997 to 2002
90 80
70 60
50 40
30 20
10
Age
16–24 25–44
45–64 65 and over
Percentage who would like to give up smoking
1997 1999
2000 2001
2002
education message that all smoking, rather than just heavy smoking, is bad for you, is being accepted.
Smokers who said they wanted to stop very much were slightly more likely than other smokers to cite health-related reasons 91
compared with 74 of those who only want to give up smoking a little. They were also more likely to give more than one reason
61 compared with only 35 of those who want to give up smoking a little.
Tables 3.8–3.10
3.3 Intending to give up smoking
