Public Opinion Quarterly Advance Access published online on May 20, 2008
Public Opinion Quarterly, doi:10.1093/poq/nfn016
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Adolescents' Inconsistency in Self-Reported Smoking
A Comparison of Reports in School and in Household Settings
Address correspondence to Denise B. Kandel; e-mail: dbk2{at}columbia.edu, pcg14{at}columbia.edu
Extent and sources of inconsistency in self-reported cigarette smoking between self-administered school surveys and household interviews was examined in two longitudinal multiethnic adolescent samples, the urban Transition to Nicotine Dependence in Adolescence (TND) (N = 832) and the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) (N = 4,414). Inconsistency was defined as a positive report of smoking in school followed by a negative report in the household. Smoking questions were ascertained with paper-and-pencil instruments (PAPI-SAQ) in school in both studies, and computer-assisted personal interviewing (CAPI) in TND but audio computer-assisted self-interviewing (ACASI) in Add Health in the household. In TND, 23.5 percent of youths who reported smoking lifetime and 20.4 percent of those who reported smoking the last 12 months in the school survey reported in the household never having smoked; in Add Health, the latter was 8.6 percent. Logistic regressions identified five common correlates of inconsistency across the two studies: younger age, ethnic minority status, lesser involvement in deviant activities, having nonsmoking parents and friends. In TND, interviewing of youth and parent by the same interviewer increased inconsistent reporting. Matching the definition of inconsistent reporting and the age, gender and race/ethnic distributions of TND on an urban Add Health subsample reduced the predicted rate of inconsistency in TND. The estimated bias attributable to CAPI compared with ACASI methodology did not reach significance in the aggregated matched samples suggesting that irrespective of administration mode, household interviews decrease reporting of smoking, especially among younger, minority and more conventional youths embedded in a social network of nonsmokers.
PAMELA C. GRIESLER is with the New York State Psychiatric Institute and the Columbia University, Department of Psychiatry, 1051 Riverside Drive, Unit 20, New York, NY 10032, USA.
DENISE B. KANDEL is with the Columbia University, Mailman School of Public Health, the Columbia University Department of Psychiatry, and the New York State Psychiatric Institute, 1051 Riverside Drive, Unit 20, New York, NY 10032, USA.
CHRISTINE SCHAFFRAN is with the New York State Psychiatric Institute, 1051 Riverside Drive, Unit 20, New York, NY 10032, USA.
MEI-CHEN HU is with the Columbia University, Mailman School of Public Health, 1051 Riverside Drive, Unit 20, New York, NY 10032, USA.
MARK DAVIES is with the New York State Psychiatric Institute and the Columbia University, Mailman School of Public Health, 1051 Riverside Drive, Unit 20, New York, NY 10032, USA. Work on this article was partially supported by research grants DA12697 from NIDA/NCI and ALF CU51672301A1 from the American Legacy Foundation (Denise Kandel, principal investigator) and a Research Scientist Award (DA00081) from the National Institute on Drug Abuse to Denise Kandel. This research uses data from Add Health, a program project designed by J. Richard Udry, Peter S. Bearman, and Kathleen Mullan Harris, and funded by a grant P01-HD31921 from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, with cooperative funding from 17 other agencies. Special acknowledgement is due Ronald R. Rindfuss and Barbara Entwisle for assistance in the original design. Persons interested in obtaining data files from Add Health should contact Add Health, Carolina Population Center, 123 W. Franklin Street, Chapel Hill, NC 27516–2524, USA (www.cpc.unc.edu/addhealth/contract.html). Data used in the analyses were obtained through a subcontract 12049901R with the Carolina Population Center. The work was performed at Columbia University and the New York State Psychiatric Institute.