Interpersonal awareness and smoking behavior in the workplace.

A questionnaire survey was conducted in small-scale production companies in Japan to examine "interpersonal awareness" and smoking behavior in the workplace. Interpersonal awareness (IA) of smokers is defined as awareness of other people's presence when smoking. Study participants were 1048 smokers and 744 nonsmokers, contrasted by worksite: office or production. Controlling for selected baseline variables, office work smokers, who smoked more in the workplace than production work smokers (77.4% vs 51.6%, p < .001), had a higher IA in the workplace (75.5% vs 58.9%, p < .001) but did not differ in IA at home (69.7% vs 66.0%). In male smokers of both worksites, degree of IA in the workplace correlated positively with that at home (rs = .36, p < .001, office; rs = .45, p < .001, production), and daily cigarette consumption correlated negatively with degree of IA at home (rs = -.44, p < .001, office; rs = -.17, p < .001, production). A predilection for smoking more at home than in the workplace correlated with higher IA in the workplace for male office smokers (rs = -.21, p < .01). In contrast, a predilection for smoking more at home than in the workplace correlated with lower degree of IA at home for production smokers of both sexes (rs = 20, p < .001, male; rs = .53, p < .05, female). Interpersonal awareness is deemed an important behavioral factor for smoking workers.