Tobacco use

Tobacco use

by Deleted user -
Number of replies: 7

     Tobacco use represents a critical challenge to public health and has been identified as tobacco epidemic, which has numerous consequences, such as cancer, cardiovascular diseases, etc. Tobacco use kills almost six million people per year (WHO). There is a publication from the WHO, Global Report entitled Mortality Attributable to Tobacco, which was published in 2012 and it shows that the problem exists worldwide in both gender (female and male).

     My research idea is tobacco smoking among young age. I found it very interesting topic, since I read that smoking in the age of 13-15 is increasing according to Global Youth Tobacco Surrey (1998- 2008) (WHO).

     While, I am concerned to build up a picture of tobacco smoking in young age is easy to decide who I am going to interview, young people from many different neighborhoods (from upper class and low- income families) both boys and girls. I will find my interviewees from schools or societies. I, also, think is a good idea to use snowball as a method of finding interviewees because I want to see if the peer pressure exists. I do not know if I am right, so you can tell me your opinion.

     The next step to my research will be to choose a cozy and friendly place, maybe a café, where the adolescents can feel relaxed and free to discuss with me without stress.

     In order to investigate the social basis of smoking in young age, I have to find questions which will approach the topic correctly, such as when they start smoking, the causes, peer pressure, if their parents are smokers, knowledge about the consequences of smoking, participation of prevention programs. My questions will be simple and here are some of my questions:

-          In what age do you start smoking?

-          What was the reason you start smoking?

-          How was your mood at that time?

-          Have you experienced peer pressure/ bullying associated with smoking to school?

-          Are your parents smokers?

-          Was the cigarette accessible to you?

-          How was your family life at that time?

-          Do you know the consequences of smoking?

-          Have you ever participated to a school- based prevention program about smoking? 

In reply to Deleted user

Re: Tobacco use

by Sara Shaw -

If you were looking to work this up Marina, then a next step would be to hone your research question, also to think about how you might further develop your questions to really explore how and why the teenagers you speak to have started/continue to smoke.

Quite a few of the topics guides posted use CLOSED questions (with predefined answers), but it seems that you would like to explore the reaasons for smoking in more detail Marina and so more OPEN questions might help. See e.g. a book on 'Constructing Questions for Interviews and Questionniares' by William Foddy (its not in the library but much of chapter 1 is on google books).

What do other thinks?

In reply to Sara Shaw

Re: Tobacco use

by Sandeep Suryadevara Rao -

Hi Marina,

I fully understand the field you wish to explore, and certainly your questions would generate a lot of information. But I am not clear of the exact research question that you are trying to answer. Although I assume it is along the lines of:

'What are the reasons for the increased prevalence of smoking in the 13-15 age group' or 'what factors contribute to smoking in 13-15 year olds'

I definitely think the relaxed is a good way of stopping children underreporting smoking (in case their parents find out). I suppose that conversely, if you interview a large group of children in a relaxed environment, they may try to show off by exaggerating how much they smoke.

With regards to adjusting some of those questions to being open questions, maybe we could use:

-What good comes from you smoking?

-What are the bad effects of your smoking? (rather than the consequences question)

-What are your parents (role-models) attitudes to smoking? (which is an extension of the 'are your parents smokers' question)

And if we are investigating methods to reduce smoking in this age group:

-Is there anything that would stop you from smoking?

In reply to Deleted user

Re: Tobacco use

by Yasin Fatine -

This is definitely a pressing matter today with the way tobacco use is increasing, particularly in the developing world. I am not familiar with the term 'snowball' to recruit interviewees, and is it necessary to have a standardised 'relaxed' place to conduct these interviews? Also, although there are a couple of yes/no questions, should there be more quantitative data collected, especially if you wanted to develop an intervention against smokers of this young age?

In reply to Yasin Fatine

Re: Tobacco use

by Sandeep Suryadevara Rao -

Hi Yasin

I think snowball sampling is when people who have already been interviewed in a particular study spread the word to their friends who then also participate in the study.

I imagine its a good way to increase the number of participants. But the recruitment is not random so it can introduce bias

In reply to Sandeep Suryadevara Rao

Re: Tobacco use

by Deleted user -

Thanks for the 'snowball' explaination! I think this is definately a suitable way to increase the number of participants although those new participants would very likely belong to a similar social class!

As we already know that there is a great increase in teenage smokers, I find a qualitative interview study a good choice of discovering the reasons behind this increase. Only then a prevention progamme can be started!

In reply to Deleted user

Re: Tobacco use

by Deleted user -

I like the idea that you try to get info on a broader area of the participants' environment, instead of focussing only on family life or friends/school.

I fear, however, that a fair share of participants will not answer the question 'Have you experienced peer pressure/ bullying associated with smoking to school?' truthfully - especially among teenagers - as it clashes with all the ideas of being cool and part of a group, which you wanted to know about in the first place.

Have you thought about how many participants you want to interview? We know that for topics like smoking you should interview at least 100 people. If you want to interview them all face-to-face at a cafe, your study will definitely take a lot of time.

Also, since you want to interview students you might face some legal obstacles. I don't know about UK law, but in Austria for example it is (a) only under certain reasons allowed to gather students as participatns for a study in schools, and (b) forbidden to address them directly - you'd need to get approaval from legal guardians for every student. A friend of mine did a survey on the use of contraception among teenagers, and she faced some serious obstacles there. But I digress.

Overall, I really like your approach to the topic.

In reply to Deleted user

Re: Tobacco use

by Deleted user -

First of all, I would like to clarify my research question, which is "What are the reasons of the increase of smoking in young age?". In my opinion, qualitative interview is the best way to approach this topic, because the aim of a qualitative interview is to standardize the interviews in order to claim direct comparability between interviews with different people and to interview enough people. 

Yasin, I do believe that the choice of the place plays significant role, that's why I chose a cozy, friendly, relaxed place, especially when the interviewees are young people.

In addition, a good number of participants would be 100, so yes, that will definitely take time, but if it is done well, this research is able to achieve a level of depth of smoking in young age. So it's worth it. (at least I think so)

About the legal obstacles, it depends on the country the research will take place. After deciding this, I will be well informed about the laws of interviewing adult people.

Lastly, these are very good ideas for open questions Sandy, so thanks! And Sebastian, you might be right, so I consider your opinion about the "snowball" method!