New anti-smoking legislation on youth smoking and quitting behaviours via a smoking cessation hotline

published_or_final_versio

When will youth smokers make a quit attempt and resume smoking after receiving telephone counseling? A longitudinal study

Paper Session 10 - Adolescent Smoking Cessation: PA10-1OBJECTIVE: To examine the pattern of youth smokers who received telephone smoking cessation intervention and who would initiate a quit attempt and subsequently resume smoking. METHODS: We collected data from a toll-free smoking cessation hotline “Youth Quitline” in Hong Kong from September 2005 to December 2007. The Youth Quitline is a peer-led hotline with multiple telephone counseling sessions at baseline, 1-week and 1-month and successive telephone follow-ups at 3- and 6-months, to help youth smokers aged 12 – 25 quit smoking. We applied non-parametric Kaplan-Meier method to explore the time trend prior to initiating a quit attempt as well as smoking resumption. RESULTS: The study included 408 youth callers, and 282 started quitting within the follow-up period. About 30% of the youth smokers (95%CI = 26 ￢– 35%) would initiate a quit attempt within 7 days after receiving the baseline telephone intervention. For the 282 callers who quit within the follow-up period, two-thirds (67%, 95%CI = 44 – 56%) resumed smoking within the first 7 days after their quit attempt. CONCLUSIONS: This is the first study using survival analysis techniques to evaluate how soon youth smokers initiate their quit attempts and resume smoking, after receiving telephone counseling. Youth smokers who intend to quit initiate a quit attempt shortly after receiving the telephone intervention. Smoking cessation counselors should provide subsequent follow-ups promptly after the baseline intervention to capitalize on the quitting intentions of the smokers.postprintThe 16th Annual Meeting of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco (SRNT 2010), Baltimore, MD., 24-27 February 2010. In Proceedings of the SRNT, 2010, p. 2

Research on the Social Causes of Juvenile Crime: Final Report

published_or_final_versionCommissioned by: Fight Crime Committee. Prepared by: The University of Hong Kon

Employing foreign domestic helper: A relief for Hong Kong mothers?

organized by the University of Hong Kong, Department of Social Work and Social Administratio

Impact of problem-based learning on social work students: Growth and limits

Social workers are expected to constantly improve their knowledge and experience and respond quickly to new challenges. Educators appreciate the significance of learning how to learn to prepare students for real-life demands at work. For these reasons, problem-based learning (PBL) has been used experimentally in the training of different disciplines including social work. In recent years, the University of Hong Kong implemented PBL to cultivate social work students' self-directed learning and group learning/collaboration abilities. A PBL Questionnaire was devised to assess the growth of students in these areas. Students were invited to fill in the PBLQ at the beginning and at the end of the PBL programme. Two focus groups of graduates and agency supervisors were also conducted to see how PBL training might affect work performance. The PBLQ scores reflected a varied personal growth profile across the different student cohorts. The training stimulated their growth in employing multiple sources of learning, directing their own learning goals and activities, and teamwork collaboration. But growth in group learning abilities was not found. While there was positive feedback from the graduates and supervisors, generalization of the findings requires more rigorous exploration.link_to_subscribed_fulltex