Youth Smoking Status: Perceptions Versus Measurements
July 27th, 2009 Posted by: admin
American Journal of Health Behavior 33(6): 760-768 Objective: To determine whether youths who have smoked cigarettes in the past 30 days perceive themselves as smokers. Methods: Sensitivity and specificity for 3 classifications were analyzed and compared to youths’ perceptions of smoking status. Results: The common criterion of having smoked cigarettes in the past 30 days reflected youths’ perceptions of their smoking status with modest accuracy although adding a second criterion of having also smoked 100 or more cigarettes in a lifetime more accurately reflects youths’ perceptions of their smoking status. Conclusions: Youths frequently determine smoking status based on behavioral criteria that differ from the standard criterion of 30-day point prevalence.
