The Impact of Education on Smoking Refrain Based on the Theory of Planned Behavior on Shiraz High School Students’ Attitudes

Background: smoking is one of the preventable causes ofdiseases as well as early deaths all around the world. in addition,conducting educational interventions plays a major role inpreventing adolescents from smoking. therefore, the presentstudy aimed to investigate the effect of educational interventionbased on the theory of planned behavior on preventing shirazistudents from smoking.methods: in the present quasi-experimental study, 154 malestudents of the 2nd grade of high school from shiraz were selectedthrough multi-stage cluster sampling and randomly assignedto a control and an experimental group. the study data werecollected through a questionnaire including the demographicinformation, questions on knowledge, and questions based onthe components of the theory of planned behavior. after thepre-test, the intervention group underwent the educationalintervention and after 2 months, both groups took part in thepost-test. then, the data were entered into the spss statisticalsoftware (v.11.5) and analyzed through the non-parametric testsof mann-whitney, fisher, and chi- square as well as linearmultiple logistic regression.results: no significant difference was observed between thetwo groups’ mean scores before the intervention. after theintervention, the intervention group’s scores of knowledge,attitude, intention, subjective norms, and perceived behavioralcontrol significantly increased.conclusion: according to the findings of the present study,educational intervention based on the theory of plannedbehavior was highly effective in reducing shirazi highschool students’ intention to smoke.