Dec 30, 2013 08:48 AM EST By Staff Reporter, UniversityHerald Reporter

Smoking is a common habit among students and so is the New Year's resolution to quit. These yearly commitments hardly help kick the butt. However, researchers have found that weekly commitments, rather than yearly ones to quit smoking can help stop the habit.

Researchers at San Diego State University, the Santa Fe Institute, The Monday Campaigns and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health analysed Google search query logs from 2008 to 2012. The query data, 'how to quit smoking,' of six different languages was studied to understand the weekly pattern of people's thoughts to stop smoking.

The results showed that people searched methods to stop smoking mostly on Mondays. "On New Year's Day, interest in smoking cessation doubles," lead study author, John Ayers of San Diego State University said in a press release. "But New Year's happens one day a year. Here we're seeing a spike that happens once a week."

According to Joanna Cohen, a co-author of the Google study and director of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Institute for Global Tobacco Control, "campaigns for people to quit may benefit from shifting to weekly cues to increase the number of quit attempts participants make each year."

This means that quitting smoking on a weekly basis with short term goals will prove more beneficial than a one-time New Year's attempt.

In a recent study, the researchers found that a third of U.S. college students smoked cigarettes, chewed tobacco and cigars. Furthermore, the number of college students smoking increased from 22 percent to 28 percent between 1993 and 1997.

The researchers of the current study explained that it took around seven to 10 attempts to quit smoking completely. They should be encouraged to re-quit the habit once a week, so that the overall time required to quit smoking can be achieved sooner.

Morgan Johnson, director of programs and research at the Monday Campaigns and another co-author of the Google paper, suggested that contemplating quitting on Monday can be used to provide social support for quitters, an important factor in long-term success.

The study has been published in the Journal of Clinical Psychology.

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