Smokers unlikely to quit.

Data from a population survey were used to examine the relationships of the number and the duration of previous smoking cessation attempts with current confidence and perceived difficulty of quitting, beliefs about reasons for current smoking and for previous relapses, and preferences for different forms of assistance with cessation. There were significant positive relationships between the duration of previous cessation attempts and perceived difficulty and between the number of previous cessation attempts and confidence. Those who had made more cessation attempts and who had been able to abstain for less than a week were more likely to attribute both relapse and current smoking to uncontrollable factors such as addiction. There were no relationships between cessation attempts and preferences expressed for personalized, or any other, forms of assistance with cessation. These results support the proposition that multiple and short-duration smoking-cessation attempts are related to reduced optimism regarding future cessation.