Pennsylvania's Youth Tobacco Survey: A Tool for Promoting Student Health and Achievement

The Pennsylvania Youth Tobacco Survey (YTS) is a tool used by the PA Department of Health (DOH) to collect data from students in grades 6-12 and enhances the capacity to design, implement, and evaluate tobacco prevention and control programs. Nearly all tobacco use begins during youth and if smoking continues at current rates, 5.6 million of today’s children will ultimately die prematurely from a smoking-related illness. The YTS evaluates youth’s knowledge and attitudes regarding tobacco use, exposure to media and advertising, information on the enforcement of minors’ access to tobacco products, presence of tobacco programs in school curricula, cessation attempts and successes, second-hand exposure, and use of other tobacco products. The YTS gives planners information to determine programs and policymakers and other stakeholders a way of monitoring outcomes. Respondents for the 2010-2011 YTS were selected using a two-stage cluster sampling design to obtain a representative sample of public school students at the state level in grades 6 through 8 and grades 9 through 12. From the sample frames, 87 eligible high schools and 87 eligible middle schools were selected. Lists of classes were obtained from each participating school, and one to four classes were selected randomly from these class rosters. In Pennsylvania, 3.4% of youth in middle school and 18.6% of high school students smoked cigarettes for one or more days in the past 30 days. Collaboration with the PA Department of Education is ongoing and includes combined administration of the 2014-2015 PA YTS and Youth Risk Behavior Survey.