Adolescent smoking is increasing continuously in Korea. Since most of the adolescent are belong to school in Korea, it is desirable to conduct a smoking prevention program at school. The smoking prevention programs, also need to be done continuously. Most of the former programs, however, are focused on one-time class so have no continuity. The purpose of the study was to develop school-based comprehensive smoking prevention program and to test its
effectiveness. As a study frame work, the Prochaska's transtheoretical model which explains stage of change behavior was used.
Study design was quasi-experimental with pre and three post test. Total 41 high school students participated in the study, 22 in experimental group and 21 in control group. To see the long-term effectiveness of the program, participants were followed after 3 and 6 month. The program was made up total 9 sessions, took 60-70 minutes for one session and provided twice a week. The experimental group was devided into 3 small groups and three trained researchers leaded the group. To test the effectiveness of the program, nicotine dependency, urine cotinine level, self-efficacy, stage of change of smoking behavior, stress level were tested as dependent variables.
Only urine cotinine level showed significant differences after the program. The cotinine level and self-efficacy, cotinine level and stress were significantly correlated in experimental group.
Since it is very difficult to decrease adolescent smoking, small group intervention strategies and continuous follow-up was successful to decrease smoking amount. It is suggested that further research
needs to be done to test effectiveness of the program with large study samples.