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belief and 26 (21%) gave an indefinite answer. The percentage of
women who said they believed in such an association was 73% compared
with 63% for men. The difference is not statistically significant.
Change in smoking habits
Of the 83 smokers who believe in an association between
smoking and cancer, 20 claimed to have changed their smoking habits
One Youth Club member had changed from a pipe to cigarettes so
the effective figure is 19. Ten were males and nine females, so the
percentage changing their habits was much larger for females at 37%
than males at 17%. This difference does not quite reach the 0.05
level of significance.
On analysis of the forms for the twenty who claimed to have
changed their smoking habits, it was found that two males claim
their change was unconnected with the lecture, another has become a
non-smoker, another has "eschewed cigarettes" and two others have
reduced the quantity smoked. There is no information on the type of
change for the nine females and the remaining four males. A weakness
of this investigation is that no information was obtained of the
type of change, e.g. to non-smoking, to smoking less, to smoking a
pipe instead of cigarettes or indeed to smoking more. It appears,
however, that lectures of this type are likely to be more effective
with women than men— only eight out of 59 men changed their
smoking habits as a result (presumably) of the lecture compared with
9 out of 24 women. Several other smokers admitted to having tried
to reduce their consumption of cigarettes with no lasting effect.
Of the 64 who failed to change their smoking habits for the
better, 29 (45%) welcomed the idea of a treatment designed to help
people to stop smoking. On the other hand 35 (or 42% of the 83 who
believe in an association between smoking and cancer) had not
changed their smoking habits and apparently had no wish to do so.
Summary
The answers to the questions posed in the survey were
(a) How many people intellectually convinced — 66%
(b) How frequently smokinghabits changed in the intellectually
convinced —23%.
The other point of interest was that 35% of the intellectually
convinced would like to change their habits. This could create quite
a problem in numbers for smoking clinics made generally available.
I wish to thank Mr. Leak, Statistician, Essex County Council
for his help with the statistics."