Assessment of Cigarette Smoking and Smoking Susceptibility among Youth: Telephone Computer-Assisted Self-Interviews versus Computer-Assisted Telephone Interviews

This experimental study assesses the effect of two survey methods, telephone audio computer-assisted self-interviewing (T-ACASI) and computer-assisted telephone interviewing (CATI), on self-reports of smoking behavior and smoking susceptibility among adolescents 12-17 years of age in California. In T-ACASI, participants listen to prerecorded, computer-controlled questions and respond by pressing the keypad on a touch-tone telephone. In CATI, interviewers administer the questions and enter responses into a computer. Prior research suggests that youth may be more likely to report sensitive behaviors in a self-administered survey like T-ACASI compared to an interviewer-administered survey like CATI, due to greater perceived confidentiality. Logistic regression analyses were conducted on unweighted data, controlling for demographic differences. Adjusted estimates of current smoking (past 30 days) were significantly greater in T-ACASI (8.3 percent) than CATI (4.5 percent). Smoking susceptibility (i.e., lack of a firm commitment not to smoke among those who have never smoked) was also greater in T-ACASI (45.0 percent) than CATI (34.9 percent). In both surveys, social desirability response bias was negatively associated with smoking, which suggests that response bias was problematic for both modes. Many respondents reported that a parent was present during the interview (59.4 percent in CATI; 42.0 percent in T-ACASI). In both surveys, parental presence was negatively associated with smoking, which suggests that this factor could also contribute to underreporting. Application of sample weights to the data eliminated the survey mode effects; however, the CATI current smoking estimate (9.3 percent) from this study was significantly less than an estimate (14.2 percent) obtained from a self-administered, school-based survey conducted the same year on California adolescents.