The Correlation between Metacognitive Beliefs, Coping Strategies, and Negative Emotions with Student's Smoking

Smoking is an important phenomenon for its multi variables nature. College students had shown more tendency to it. The aim of the present research was to investigate the relationship between metacognitive beliefs, coping strategies, and negative emotions in students’ smoking. In a correlative study, 250 male students from Tarbiat Molallem University were selected by convenience sampling method. The students were asked to complete the following questionnaires: metacognitive beliefs questionnaire (MCQ-30), coping inventory for stressful situations (CISS), hospital anxiety and depression scale (HADS), and researcher questionnaire about smoking. Pearson's correlation and regression algorithms were used to analyze the data. Results show that metacognitive beliefs, negative emotions, and coping strategies are associated with smoking. There was a significant correlation between metacognition and smoking. There was also a positive relationship between coping strategies and smoking (P<0.05). In general, the hospital anxiety subscale alone explained 2.6% of the variance related to smoking. Adjusting student's metacognitive beliefs and training coping strategies can substantially reduce smoking by alleviating their negative emotions.