OBJECTIVES: This study aimed to develop an Internet-assisted smoking cessation 
program accompanied with auricular acupressure, and compare the quit rate and 
self-efficacy of youth smokers receiving auricular acupressure with and without 
the Internet-assisted smoking cessation program.
DESIGN: A Website was constructed on IBM Websphere 5.0 and DB2 database using 
HTML, Javascript, and JSP. A quasiexperimental research design was adopted. 
Subjects were assigned nonrandomly to two groups. Group 1 received auricular 
acupressure plus the Internet-assisted smoking cessation program, whereas group 
2 received auricular acupressure only.
MEASUREMENTS: The data of demographic factors, serum cotinine, quitting rate, 
nicotine dependence, and self-efficacy of subjects were collected before and 
after a 4-week intervention.
RESULTS: After intervention, the quit rate was 15.78% in group 1 and 2.56% in 
group 2. Nicotine dependence was significantly lowered in group 1, but remained 
unchanged in group 2. The improvement of self-efficacy between groups 1 and 2 
was significantly different.
CONCLUSIONS: The combination of auricular acupressure and Internet-assisted 
smoking cessation program was more efficacious than auricular acupressure alone 
in terms of quit rate.