Surveillance indicators for potential reduced exposure products (PREPs): developing survey items to measure awareness.

Background: Over the past decade, tobacco companies have introduced cigarettes and smokeless tobacco products (known as Potential Reduced Exposure Products, PREPs) with purportedly lower levels of some toxins than conventional cigarettes and smokeless products. It is essential that public health agencies monitor awareness, interest, use, and perceptions of these products so that their impact on population health can be detected at the earliest stages.

Methods: This paper reviews and critiques existing strategies for measuring awareness of PREPs from 16 published and unpublished studies.

The effects on smokers of Boston's smoke-free bar ordinance: a longitudinal analysis of changes in compliance, patronage, policy support, and smoking at home.

Objective: We prospectively examined effects of the implementation of a smoking ban in bars on Boston, Massachusetts, smokers.

Methods: A representative sample of Massachusetts smokers was interviewed before and after the smoking ban was implemented in Boston. Participants were adult smokers living in Boston (n = 83) and in 203 other Massachusetts cities and towns that did not adopt smoking bans in bars prior to July 2004 (n = 903).

Consequences of declining survey response rates for smoking prevalence estimates.

Background: Response rates have been declining in statewide tobacco surveys. This study investigated whether there was associated evidence of increasing bias in smoking prevalence estimates.

Methods: Demographic characteristics of respondents to tobacco surveys in Massachusetts and California were compared to population data in the early 1990s, when response rates were high, and in more recent years, when response rates were lower.