Trend of smoking and psychosocial predictors among youth

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): From the mid-1970's to 1992, the prevalence rates of cigarette smoking among youth in the United States steadily decreased. However, these rates increased from 1992 and peaked in 1997. During the past five years, a steady decline in tobacco use among youth has again been observed. A similar pattern has also been observed in California. In this study, we will use secondary analysis of archival data from two youth tobacco surveys in California to determine whether this inverted V-shaped trend applies to various smoking behaviors (e.g., 30-day and weekly smoking behaviors) among youth in California. We will also examine the trends of cigarette use across different age groups and birth cohorts. Furthermore, we will identify several risk and protective factors of tobacco use (e.g., friends' smoking, social norms) and examine their patterns of change and impacts on tobacco use in the last ten years using two newly developed statistical approaches: age-period-cohort analysis and multilevel structural equation model. The proposed data sets (California Youth Survey and California Tobacco Youth Survey) to be analyzed in this project provide a rich array of cross-sectional data from 1990 to 2000. Each cross-sectional sample provides a replicated survey of tobacco use among youth in California. This project proposes to analyze the cross-sectional data using multiple regression, logistic regression, and structural equation models. Information obtained from the replicated cross-sectional samples provides a profile of changes across time. Furthermore, they can be studied using the multilevel approach to gain a better understanding of the long-term trend of tobacco use, changes in tobacco use-related psychosocial factors, and changes in the impacts of those factors on tobacco use across time. The project is important because it will identify factors associated with recent trends in cigarette smoking, which will help in specifying critical components for tobacco use prevention programs, leading to efficient and well-targeted prevention intervention programs for youth.