The Understanding of Maternal Smoking among Women who were Smoking or had Quit Smoking during Pregnancy.
Sandra Small, Andrea Brennan-Hunter, Yanqing Yi and 1 others
PMID 36214102WHAT IT FOUND
Pregnant and postnatal women with higher understanding of maternal smoking were more likely to have quit.
Many had low to moderate understanding, gaps about specific harms, and misbeliefs about cutting down or quitting.
Key findings
01Women averaged 9 correct answers, and 55% scored 9 or less.
02Only 10 to 29% had accurate beliefs about some pregnancy harms, and 37% did not know babies may be small.
03After adjustment, the highest and second-highest understanding quartiles had quitting odds ratios of 8.80 and 9.39 versus the lowest quartile.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
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What it does not show
This was a cross-sectional survey, so it cannot show that better understanding caused women to quit. Women who were already motivated to quit may have learned or remembered more. Participants were recruited through family resource centres in Newfoundland and Labrador and included many women with low income or unemployment, so the results may not apply to other groups. Smoking status was self-reported and anonymous, with no biochemical validation, so some women may have misreported whether they smoked or quit. The understanding questionnaire was newly developed and had no established psychometric properties, so the score should be read as an approximate measure of beliefs. The sample was 161 women, and six were removed from logistic regression for missing data, so some associations may have been missed because of limited numbers.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that giving women more information will make them quit. The study was cross-sectional and self-reported, so higher understanding may reflect women who were already more motivated to quit.