Parents Are Unaware of Their Youths' Tobacco Use: Results from the Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health Study.
Jessica L King, Julie W Merten, Nicole E Nicksic
PMID 32367532WHAT IT FOUND
Most parents did not know their child had ever used tobacco.
In 2015-2016, 64.5% of parents of ever users were unaware; e-cigarette unawareness was 61.8%, compared with 48.1% for cigarettes.
Key findings
01Among youth who reported ever using tobacco, parent unawareness was 57.6% in 2013-2014, 61.9% in 2014-2015, and 64.5% in 2015-2016.
02In 2015-2016, parents were unaware of 48.1% of youth cigarette ever use and 61.8% of youth e-cigarette ever use.
03Youth who reported tobacco use in the past 30 days had lower odds of parent unawareness (adjusted odds ratio 0.33; 95% confidence interval 0.26-0.41), but 23% of them still had unaware parents.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
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What it does not show
Parents were asked about ever use of any tobacco, not specific products, so some products may not have been recognised as tobacco. Youth tobacco use was self-reported, so actual use could not be confirmed. The e-cigarette question wording changed between waves, so apparent increases may reflect measurement change. The study is a cohort survey and did not test changes over time. Data were collected before newer pod-style devices became common, so current patterns may differ. The paper gives a final sample of 2,583 youth ever users with unaware parents, but not the full denominator for the unawareness percentage.
Declared interests
The article is labelled as supported by NIH extramural research, and no author conflicts of interest are stated in the text.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that educating parents will reduce youth tobacco use. This paper only reports associations between parent unawareness and youth use, and youth use was self-reported, so it does not show that awareness causes use or that education changes behaviour.