Adolescent cigarette smoking: A developmental analysis of influences

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Abstract
This study investigated the influence of various factors associated with smoking behaviour among a randomly selected sample of 3000 Dublin post‐primary school pupils. A specific focus was the extent to which these influences change with age during adolescence (13–17 years). Normative influences on smoking behaviour increased up to age 15–16 years and then declined. This curvilinear pattern seems largely due to the rise and decline of peer influences over these years. On the other hand, the influence of parents (both in terms of parental example and approval) is constant over this period. Beliefs about the consequences of smoking were also affected by age. The distinctive contribution of such beliefs to the prediction of smoking doubled during the years under consideration. These results have important implications for the understanding of susceptibility to social influence during adolescence and for the design of effective smoking prevention programmes.