Should the Proxy-Respondents Be Surveyed When Assessing the Regular Smoking Initiation Age?

• Activity Number: 444
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Tuesday, August 6, 2013 : 2:00 PM to 3:50 PM
• Sponsor: Survey Research Methods Section
• Author(s): Peng Zhao*+ and Julia Soulakova and Lisa Crockett
• Companies: University of Nebraska-Lincoln and University of Nebraska-Lincoln and University of Nebraska-Lincoln
• Keywords: Reliability ; Multiple logistic regression ; Balanced repeated replications ; Survey administration mode ; Response mode

Abstract

The purpose of our study was to examine the consistency of reports of current and prior smoking and specifically to explore whether there are differences in the consistency of proxy-reported and self-reported smoking behaviors. Data came from the 2002-2003 Tobacco Use Supplement to the Current Population Survey, where the current smoking behaviors and smoking history of participants were reported by self- and proxy-respondents on two occasions, one year apart. Consistency was assessed with respect to ever-smoking and the age of fairly regular smoking initiation. Model-based and additional estimates were used to test the partially-ordered hypotheses of interest. Here we present our results with respect to consistency of the regular smoking initiation age.