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U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion

Reduce current e-cigarette use in adolescents — TU‑05 Data Methodology and Measurement

On this page:  About this objective  |  Methodology  |  History

About this objective

Data

Data Source:  National Youth Tobacco Survey (NYTS), CDC/NCCDPHP

National baseline: 13.8 percent of students in grades 6 through 12 used e-cigarettes in the past 30 days in 2018

National target: 10.5 percent

Numerator
Number of students in grades 6 through 12 who report having used e-cigarettes on 1 or more of the past 30 days.
Denominator
Number of students in grades 6 through 12.
National target-setting method
Percentage point improvement
National target-setting method details
Percentage point improvement from the baseline using Cohen's h effect size of 0.10.
1
National target-setting method justification
Trend data were evaluated for this objective, but it was not possible to project a target because the trend was moving away from the desired direction. A percentage point improvement was calculated using Cohen's h effect size of 0.1. This method was used because of new policies and regulations that are aimed to reduce tobacco use among youth.

Methodology

Questions used to obtain the national baseline data

(For additional information, please visit the data source page linked above.)

From the 2018 National Youth Tobacco Survey:

Numerator:
During the past 30 days, on how many days did you use e-cigarettes?
  1. 0 days
  2. 1 or 2 days
  3. 3 to 5 days
  4. 6 to 9 days
  5. 10 to 19 days
  6. 20 to 29 days
  7. All 30 days

Methodology notes

Students are classified as using e-cigarettes if they report using e-cigarettes on one or more of the 30 days preceding the survey.

History

Trend issues
From 1999 to 2018, the NYTS was conducted in schools as a self-administered, paper-and-pencil questionnaire. Beginning in 2019, the NYTS switched to being conducted as a self-administered, electronic survey. No mode effect was found for current use of tobacco product estimates in a pilot of the survey changes. In 2020, the data collection timeline was truncated due to widespread school closures due to the Coronavirus Disease 2019 pandemic. Survey administration was due to run from January 16, 2020 through May 15, 2020 but was ended early on March 16, 2020 due to widespread school closures. A weighting factor was applied to each student record to adjust for nonresponse and for varying probabilities of selection. Weights were adjusted to ensure that the weighted proportions of students in each grade matched national population proportions.

1. Effect size h=0.1 was chosen to correspond with 10% improvement from a baseline of 50%.