| Summary: | Statistics Canada conducted the first national Youth Smoking Survey (YSS) in the fall of 1994. The survey had two components: children aged 10 to 14 who were surveyed at school, while youth aged 15 to 19 were interviewed at home, by telephone. The survey findings were published in 1996 by Health Canada as a research report and as a set of fact sheets. The smoking behaviour of the 15 to 19 year olds has been monitored by the Canadian Tobacco Use Monitoring Survey, conducted for Health Canada by Statistics Canada, since 1999. Health Canada asked Statistics Canada to repeat the school portion of the 1994 Youth Smoking Survey in the fall of 2002. Besides smoking as the core content, the 2002 YSS includes questions referring to experiences with alcohol and drugs for students in grades 7 to 9 (in Quebec secondary school grades 1 to 3). Both the 1994 and the 2002 survey provided national (excluding the Yukon, Northwest Territories, and Nunavut) and provincial estimates. Health Canada has plans to repeat the survey in 2004 and is working with the territories to support them in carrying out surveys comparable to the Youth Smoking Survey. Information on smoking, as well as the use of alcohol and drugs by children and youth, is also available from the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth (NLSCY), a Statistics Canada survey that started in 1994. However, given the nature of the NLSCY, the coverage of smoking behaviour is not extensive and the cross-sectional samples are of modest size. Additionally, the Canadian Community Health Survey (CCHS) conducted in 2001, collected data on smoking for children aged 12 and over.
|
|---|