The Effect of Awareness Training on the Harms of Smoking Based on the Cognitivism Theory on Raising the Level of Awareness of Female Health Activists

 The purpose of the present study was to investigate the effect of awareness training on the harms of smoking based on the cognitivism theory on raising the awareness of female health activists about smoking and its negative consequences.
The present study was a semi-experimental project with a pre-test/post-test design on a group of subjects. The statistical population included women active in the field of health in 22 districts of the Tehran Municipality during 2018 and 2019 (with a total of 862 people). The sample size included 456 women who were selected by purposive sampling from among the participants in a workshop, which was held in one session in each district for three hours. The data collection tool was a researcher-made questionnaire to evaluate the awareness of the harms of tobacco products, which was adjusted using face validity, and the reliability of the questionnaire was determined through Cronbach’s alpha, which was at an acceptable rate of 0.755. Due to the non-normality of the distribution of the statistical population according to the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, the Mann-Whitney U test was used to compare the pre-test and post-test changes by the SPSS software (SPSS Inc., SPSS version 26).
Findings showed that after the educational intervention, there were significant differences between the following indicators: awareness of the effects of second-hand smoke on fetuses, infants, children, and pregnant women, the harms of smoking for men and women, hookah compared to cigarettes, tobacco-induced cancers, and the average awareness of second- and third-hand tobacco smoke (p < 0.05). No significant difference was observed in the index of awareness of hookah and cigarette second-hand smoke (p = 0.621).
 The educational intervention about tobacco use and its harms improved women’s awareness of the harms of tobacco, and health professionals can use the mentioned intervention method.