Association between changes in harm perceptions and e-cigarette use among current tobacco smokers in England: a time series analysis.

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND:There is a decreasing trend in the proportion of individuals who perceive e-cigarettes to be less harmful than conventional cigarettes across the UK, Europe and the US. It is important to assess whether this may influence the use of e-cigarettes. We aimed to estimate, using a time series approach, whether changes in harm perceptions among current tobacco smokers have been associated with changes in the prevalence of e-cigarette use in England, with and without stratification by age, sex and social grade. METHODS:Respondents were from the Smoking Toolkit Study, which involves monthly cross-sectional household surveys of individuals aged 16+ years in England. Data were aggregated monthly on ~?300 current tobacco smokers between 2014 and 2019. The outcome variable was the prevalence of e-cigarette use. The explanatory variable was the proportion of smokers who endorsed the belief that e-cigarettes are less harmful than combustible cigarettes. Covariates were cigarette (vs. non-cigarette combustible) current smoking prevalence, past-year quit attempt prevalence and national smoking mass media expenditure. Unadjusted and adjusted autoregressive integrated moving average with exogeneous variables (ARIMAX) models were fitted. RESULTS:For every 1% decrease in the mean prevalence of current tobacco smokers who endorsed the belief that e-cigarettes are less harmful than combustible cigarettes, the mean prevalence of e-cigarette use decreased by 0.48% (?adj =?0.48, 95% CI?=?0.25-0.71, p 

SUBMITTER: Perski O 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7201665 | biostudies-literature | 2020 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature