NC Teen Smoking Survey aka Evaluation of the NC Health and Wellness Trust Fund Commission’s Teen Tobacco Use Prevention Media Campaign

The goal of this study, conducted for University of North Carolina’s Department of Family Medicine, was to assess tobacco use, attitudes towards tobacco use, and awareness of anti-tobacco media campaigns in a random sample of youth age 11 to 17 in the stat of North Carolina. Four separate data collection periods, a baseline and three follow-ups, have occurred to date for this project.

For the baseline sample, two sampling frames were used in this investigation: a random digit dialing (RDD) approach and an age-targeted approach. The SRU collected 637 interviews from March 7th to April 18th. Because development time was so short, there were no formal provisions made for conducting an expert review of the draft instrument or piloting the programmed version of that instrument in a pretest sample. However, both an informal review of the questionnaire and a small convenient sample pretest were conducted prior to field implementation. A machine-readable dataset with population-based weights was delivered July 1, 2004.

The first follow-up interview re-contacted the original 637 participants to further gauge teens use and attitudes of tobacco use, as well as their awareness of the continuing anti tobacco media campaigns. Of these 637 attempted surveys, 604 were completed.

Follow-up continued to contact the original participants (604) and also included a random digit dialing supplement to the frame. The survey asked many of the same questions as both baseline and the first follow-up to explore the thoughts about tobacco products. Questions about the media coverage of the anti-tobacco commercials were changed or added to better represent current coverage. Data collection occurred from January 8, 2006 to February 28, 2006, ending with 502 completed interviews from the original participants and 283 interviews from the RDD supplement, for a total of 785 interviews.

The third, and most recent, follow-up was very similar to the second follow-up in that it contacted both the returning participants (from the original frame and the follow-up 2 RDD frame) as well as called another RDD supplement. The questionnaire was altered in a similar manner as that of follow-up 2, where opinions of and practices involving tobacco were asked about, as well as renewed questions about the media coverage of anti-tobacco commercials. For this wave, the SRU collected surveys from 547 returning participants and 283 supplement participants, for a total of 830 completed surveys.

For each wave, the SRU collected the data, produced population based weights, and two datasets for each wave. The first dataset contained only the completed survey data for that wave, while the other dataset contained information from all waves to date in order to compare differences over time. The SRU looks forward to continuing the follow-ups for future studies in this area.
Principal Investigator: Adam Goldstein, M.D.
Department of Family Medicine
Other Investigators: Shelley Summerlin-Long
UNC School of Medicine
SRU Investigators: William D. Kalsbeek, PhD
Robert Agans, PhD
Sung-Heui Bae, Niantao Jiang, Laura Trompak; Research Assistants
Source: NC Health and Wellness Fund
Dates: March 2004 – April 2007

Studies: