Participant recruitment

A qualitative descriptive approach as described by Sandowski [28, 29] was used focusing on gaining a full understanding of behaviors and practices from participant perspectives. Bilingual recruitment advertisements were distributed to Chinese organizations in the lower mainland of British Columbia, Canada and posted on Chinese online forums. The forums were publically accessible and hosted on websites in Canada with Chinese language to serve Chinese Canadian immigrants. Potential participants were invited to contact the research team by telephone or email and then screened for eligibility.

Criteria for eligibility included the following: 1) self-identified as a male Chinese immigrant or Chinese Canadian; 2) currently smoked or quit smoking in the past five years; and 3) lived in Canada for at least half a year. As per the original project, participants were fathers who were expecting a child or had a child under the age of five years. Twenty-two men, recruited through the Chinese forums (n = 21) or through the Chinese organizations (n = 1), met the study criteria and provided informed consent. All participants were first-generation immigrants; two migrated to Canada with their parents before 18 years of age, and the other 20 migrated after age 18. They had lived in Canada for an average of 8.7 ± 6.4 years (range = 0.5 to 22 years), 19 of the men for less than 15 years. Characteristics of the sample are shown in Table 1.

Demographics and smoking patterns of the Chinese immigrants who smoked

All 22 participants were smoking at the time they migrated to Canada. At the time of interview, 12 participants had quit smoking (defined as having stopped smoking for at least one week) and the other ten had substantially reduced their smoking. Two of the ex-smokers quit their smoking around five years ago while the other ten quit within the last three years. Among the current smokers, three smoked 10–18 cigarettes per day (CPD) and the other seven smoked fewer than 10 CPD.