Youth smoking and vaping in Lincolnshire

We recently completed a research project in Lincolnshire to explore the use of tobacco cigarettes and electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes). 

We started by developing an understanding of the area, breaking up the county into districts and looking at available data on deprivation and predictors of smoking prevalence using our mapping toolkit. This helped us to identify 10 schools across all seven districts in Lincolnshire that we wanted to invite to participate in the research.  

We developed a survey using a mixture of comparable questions and trialed questions to explore new areas surrounding their behaviours and attitudes to e-cigarettes.

Working with the schools, we received consent from an authoritative figure in the school (head teacher, head of year etc.) for students to participate. Students were provided with clear instructions on completing the survey, and asked to use the gum seal provided to avoid others from viewing their responses, which reinforced confidentiality and boosted confidence in taking part.

We used a range of analysis methods, providing very basic analysis through to more in-depth analysis comparing groups and discovering trends in data. Through this, we managed to find very interesting insights into the smoking behaviour and attitudes of teenagers in Lincolnshire.

We found that there were more teenagers using e-cigarettes than tobacco cigarettes. However, even though there were more students trying e-cigarettes, there were more students who still use tobacco cigarettes than e-cigarettes; showing that students tend to try e-cigarettes because it’s more of a novelty.

We also found links between parental smoking and their children smoking. The research found that children with parents that smoke are more likely to pick up tobacco cigarettes – this was the same for e-cigarettes.

The most interesting statistic we found was that there were students who had tried and used e-cigarettes without having tried tobacco cigarettes before. Because of this, we found that trying tobacco cigarettes does not make you more likely to try e-cigarettes.

If you would like to find out about youth smoking in your area and understand attitudes and behaviours to promote positive behavioural change, get in contact with a member of our research team to find out how we can help.