Children's representations of "everyday" aspects of health and illness.

Moving beyond a focus on children's conceptions of causation, the study sought to (a) identify and evaluate additional dimensions along which young children's conceptions of illness might be organized and (b) to discover how young children also understand health concepts related to nutrition and routine preventive medical examination. 27 healthy preschool children, ages 4-6 were interviewed about their conceptions of common illness, knowledge of basic nutrition, and understanding of medical procedures and instruments associated with a standard pediatric examination. The findings demonstrated that children understand five characteristics of illness representations, which have also been identified in adults.

Joiners and non-joiners in worksite smoking treatment: pretreatment smoking, smoking by significant others, and expectation to quit as predictors.

Treatment joiners were differentiated from non-joiners when examined across six worksite clinic locations in the Los Angeles area. Predictors examined included preprogram smoking, demographic variables, smoking by significant others, behavioral expectations to quit, and self-efficacy regarding completing treatment and resisting urges to smoke. Non-joiners reported higher preprogram smoking levels and more friends and children who smoked.

The television school and family smoking prevention and cessation project. 1. Theoretical basis and program development.

Program development processes for the Television, School, and Family Project, a school-based smoking prevention and cessation project, are presented in this article. We first review applications of social-psychological and communications theory to school-based and mass media program development. These include the three broad areas of (a) mediators of mass media effects on behavior change, (b) the social influences approach to smoking prevention, and (c) a self-management and social support approach to smoking cessation.