A pilot study to establish a randomized trial methodology to test the efficacy of a behavioural intervention.

Presents the results of a pilot randomized controlled trial of midwife home-based motivational interviewing as a smoking cessation intervention for pregnant women. Clients were 100 consecutive self-reported pregnant smokers attending prenatal clinics in Glasgow from March to May 1997. Although smoking guidance is routinely given at intake, intervention clients (n = 50) also received a median of 4 home-based motivational interviewing sessions from 1 specially trained midwife. All 171 sessions were audio-taped and 49 interviews from 13 randomly selected clients were transcribed for content analysis. Three 'experts' assessed intervention quality using a recognized rating scale. Cotinine measurement on routine blood samples confirmed self-reported smoking change from late pregnancy telephone interviews. A postnatal telephone questionnaire measured client satisfaction and focus groups of routine midwives explored program acceptability, problems, and disruption of normal care. Motivational interviewing was satisfactory in more than 75% of transcribed interviews. In this pilot study, self-reported smoking at intake vs at end of pregnancy (both corroborated by cotinine blood levels) showed no significant difference between intervention and control groups. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved)