An Evaluative Study on the Quality of Papers on the Effects of the Smoking Prevention Programs in Korea

This investigation was performed to summarize a few prominent features of smoking prevention program studies and to evaluate the quality of smoking prevention program studies using the Quality of Study Rating Form (QSRF). 24 school-based smoking prevention programs were subjected to an evaluation of study quality using QSRF. Study quality was 57.29 points out of 100 points on average, so it cannot be said that study quality was good. Most of the studies described the subjects and the intervention contents and intervention time. 50% stated where the intervention occurred specifically, 50% of the studies either discussed a specific theory that justified the use of one or more intervention methods, or they cited literature said to support the chosen intervention method. Only one study assigned subjects randomly to experimental groups or control groups and 50.0% of the studies showed baseline equality. There was no study where subjects were blind to being in the treatment or control group or where subjects were selected randomly by random sampling procedure. 79.2% of the studies had non-treated control groups and 20.8% of the studies had comparison groups with other treatments in the form of either other delivery methods or other contents. Sample sizes were larger than 21 in the experimental group for all studies. 75% of the studies stated face validity of outcome measure or cited from previous literature. 58.3% of the studies tested reliability and 45.8% reported the reliability measure was a figure of .70 or greater. There was no study where those rating outcomes were rated blind, because researchers generally collected data by themselves. Outcome measures were taken only after the intervention was completed and tests of statistical significance were generally referred to statistical method and p value in all studies. All studies met the criteria that follow-up was greater than 75%. The implications for the future studies were discussed.