National Youth Tobacco Surveillance -- United States, 2004-2006

Objective: To compare the prevalence of tobacco use among middle school and high school students between the 2004 and 2006 National Youth Tobacco Survey (NYTS).

Methods: The 2004 and 2006 NYTS employed a three-stage cluster sample design to produce a nationally representative sample of students in grades 6–12. SUDAAN was used to compute 95% confidence intervals and two sided t-tests were conducted to test for statistical significance. During 2004, 27,933 students in 267 schools completed the NYTS resulting in an overall response rate of 88.0%. During 2006, 27,038 students in 261 schools completed the NYTS, resulting in an overall response rate of 80.2%.

Results: Findings from the 2004 and 2006 NYTS indicate that current use of any tobacco product was 11.8% and 9.5% among middle school students and 27.4% and 25.6% among high school students respectively. The decline of estimates among middle school students were significant, however, high school prevalence estimates were not significant. Cigarette smoking was the most prevalent form of tobacco used, with 8.4% of middle school students (in 2004) and 6.3% of middle school students (in 2006) reporting that they currently smoke cigarettes; and with 21.7% of high school students (in 2004) and 19.8% of high school students (in 2006) reporting that they currently smoke cigarettes. The decline of estimates among high school students were not significant.

Conclusions: The prevalence of current cigarette smoking among high school students has not shown a significant change. Additional research is needed to understand this stall among high school students.