Centre for Chronic Disease Prevention and Control

Cancer

Smoking Behaviour of Canadians
Cycle 2, 1996/97 (January 1999, No. 1)

Description of the Survey and Reports

Highlights on the smoking behaviour of Canadians have been developed to provide descriptive information from the NPHS. Depending on future interest, additional highlight reports will be developed on other core issues covered by the NPHS, such as alcohol, physical activity, injuries, stress, medications, depression, preventive health practices, sexual health, social support, health status, and access to services. The federal and provincial governments can also develop issue supplements for the NPHS (e.g., nutrition; asthma, 1994/95; health services, road safety, 1996/97), which identify additional areas for possible Highlights.

Background

The NPHS is a longitudinal household-based survey conducted every two years by Statistics Canada. The survey is designed to collect information about health status and health determinants, including health behaviour, use of health services, and socio-demographic information.

Health Canada is a member of the NPHS Advisory Committee, which also includes representatives from each provincial health ministry. This committee provides advice and recommendations to Statistics Canada.

Target Population

The target population of the NPHS consists of household residents in all provinces and territories, except persons living on Indian reserves, on Canadian Forces bases, or in some remote areas of Ontario and Quebec. Separate surveys are conducted for the territories, for operational reasons. An institutional survey component covers long-term residents of hospitals and residential care facilities.

The NPHS Highlights on the smoking behaviour of Canadians are restricted, for the most part, to the non-institutionalized population aged 15 years and over in the provinces. This represented almost 23.5 million Canadians in private households in 1996/97. The prevalence of smoking among the very young (those 12 to 14 in 1996/97) is also reported, but this age group is only included in the "Overview of Results" report.

Data Collection

Data collection for Cycle 2 began in June 1996 and was completed in August 1997. The NPHS will collect information every two years from the same panel of respondents selected in 1994/95, for up to two decades. Extensive information was collected on one selected household member, and limited information is collected on each household member living with the longitudinal respondent at the time of the survey.

The NPHS originally surveyed a sample of 20,725 households. A minimum of 1,200 households in each province was needed to ensure reliable estimates by sex and age groups. Subject to this restriction, the base sample sizes for each province were determined by using an allocation that balances the reliability requirements at the national and regional levels. In 1994/95 and 1996/97, some provinces chose to increase the number surveyed in their province. Thus the data from each cycle consist of a combination of cross-sectional (one-time-only) and longitudinal (follow-up) participants.

For these Highlights on smoking behaviour in Canada, the target population was provincial residents aged 15 and over and included a final sample size for Cycle 2 of 67,133 (12,633 original panel participants; 54,500 provincial buy-ins from Ontario, Manitoba, and Alberta). Longitudinal results (i.e., assessment of change between 1994/95 and 1996/97) are based on a sample of 12,628 respondents, representing Canadians aged 15 and over (provinces only) in 1996/97.

Response rates for both NPHS cycles have been over 85%.

Microdata

Separate public use microdata sets containing the cross-sectional results for both cycles (1994/95 and 1996/97) of the NPHS are available for purchase from Statistics Canada, or from the provincial ministries. The NPHS Cycle 2 master file data and the corresponding public-use microdata file were released on 9 November 1998. There will not be a public release of the longitudinal file because of confidentiality concerns.

All analyses are based on cases included in the master "share" file provided by Statistics Canada to Health Canada. This file includes only respondents who agreed to share their results with Health Canada. Few respondents refused to share their data. Nevertheless, the sample size for the 1996/97 master share file was slightly smaller than what is available through Statistic Canada's public use file and may result in subtle differences in estimates.