Calling It Quits: What Is the Most Effective Way to Quit Smoking?

Note: There are special considerations when designing an experiment involving human subjects. ISEF-affiliated fairs often require an Informed Consent Form for every participant who is questioned. In all cases, the experimental design must be approved by a scientific review committee (SRC) prior to the commencement of experiments or surveys. Please refer to the ISEF rules for additional important requirements for studies involving human subjects: http://www.sciencebuddies.org/science-fair-projects/project_src_safety_human_subjects.shtml.

Designing the Survey

1. Do background research so that you are knowledgeable about the terms, concepts, and questions.
2. With your background research in hand, design a question-based survey to determine which method(s) the survey participants used to quit smoking (see Designing a Question-Based Study).
3. As noted in the Introduction, your survey needs to include a question to distinguish between ex-smokers and current smokers.
4. As you design your survey, keep in mind that for many smokers, it takes multiple tries before being able to break the habit for good. Some of your survey participants are likely to have tried multiple approaches to quitting. Your survey should take advantage of this by including questions on attempts to quit the habit. For example, you might questions along these lines:
   1. How many times have you tried to quit smoking?
   2. For each time you tried to quit, please describe the method used and the length of time you succeeded in stopping smoking.
5. It's always a good idea to do a "test-run" of your survey with a few volunteers before printing up a big stack. Fix any problems in the survey that you identify with the test run, and then go ahead and make your copies for the actual survey.

Administering the Survey

1. You'll need to get a large number of volunteer participants (see How Many Survey Participants Do I Need?).
2. Some ideas for finding volunteer participants are:
   1. asking for volunteers at a busy shopping center or other public gathering place (adult supervision highly recommended);
   2. leaving blank surveys and a collection box in a doctor's or dentist's waiting room;
   3. finding a support group for ex-smokers or smokers trying to quit and ask if you can visit or drop off copies of your survey.

Analyzing the Results

There are many possible ways to analyze the data from this experiment. You may find it helpful to work with a mentor who has some experience in statistical analysis. Here are some suggestions to get you started:

1. Calculate the success rate for each method of quitting smoking.
   1. List all of the different methods used in attempts to quit smoking.
   2. Tally up the number of times each method was used in an attempt to quit smoking.
   3. Then tally up the number of successful attempts for each method.
   4. Finally, calculate the success rate (# of successful attempts/total attempts) for each method.
2. Also, spend some time analyzing the unsuccessful attempts. Do all of the methods result in similar durations of smoking cessation, or do some methods show longer (or shorter) average durations?
3. More advanced students should also examine the statistical significance of their results by formulating a null hypothesis (describing results due to chance alone) and testing their results against this hypothesis.