Extended Self-Help for Smoking Cessation

The investigators propose a randomized 3-arm design, with 660 smokers recruited into each condition. The three conditions will include: (1) Usual care (UC), which will comprise a single smoking cessation booklet developed by NCI; (2) Standard Repeated Mailings (Stand-RM), which will be the same 8 Forever Free booklets (edited for cessation) distributed over 12 months as in our preliminary studies; and (3) Intensive Repeated Mailings (Inten-RM), which will add two additional booklets to extend the intervention out to 18 months, plus additional monthly contacts. Assessments will occur at six-month intervals, through 30 months. An overview of the design is depicted in Table 4, which will be referenced throughout the remainder of this proposal.

Participants:

• Planned Participants: 1980 daily smokers (for a final sample of at least 1584 after attrition), recruited via multimedia advertisements (daily and weekly newspapers, radio, cable television, public transit ads, etc.), public service announcements, and direct community engagement.

Inclusion criteria

• smoking at least five cigarette per day over the past year
• not currently enrolled in a face-to-face smoking cessation program
• able to speak and read English
• desire to quit smoking, as indicated by a score of at least 5 ("Think I should quit, but not quite ready") on the Contemplation Ladder (Biener & Abrams, 1991)

Exclusion criteria

• number of participants from the same street address limited to 1
• no more than 2 referrals per participant