Effectiveness of CRT on Secondary School Students’ Attitude towards Cigarette Smoking in Akwa South LGA

This study investigated the effectiveness of CRT on secondary school students’ attitude towards cigarette smoking in Akwa South LGA. One research question guided the study while one null hypothesis was tested at 0.05 level of significance. The design for the study was quasi-experimental, non-randomised pre-test and post-test, control group research. The sample comprised 62 students purposively selected from a population of 289 students. Questionnaire on Cigarette Smoking (QCS), an adapted Youth tobacco survey (YTS) and Wisconsin inventory of smoking dependence motive (WISDM-68). was used for data collection. The internal consistency reliability coefficient for the instrument was 0.85.Data was collected through direct delivery of the instrument to the respondents. Mean scores were used to answer the research questions, while the null hypotheses were tested using Analysis of Co-variance (ANCOVA). The finding of the study revealed among others that Cognitive Restructuring technique was effective in reducing students with prone attitude towards cigarette smoking. It was concluded from the findings that CRT is an effective treatment technique for modifying cigarette smoking among secondary school students in Awka South LGA. Based on the findings and implications of the study, it was recommended that Practicing counsellors and therapist should make use of the cognitive restructuring technique in counselling and therapy of secondary school students to modifying their unhealthy attitude towards cigarette smoking.