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Terminology
- Current smoker
- - has smoked at least 100 cigarettes in his/her lifetime, and includes the following:
- Current daily - a current smoker who has smoked at least one cigarette per day for each of the 30 days preceding the survey.
- Current occasional - a current smoker who has smoked at least one cigarette during the past 30 days, but has not smoked every day .
- Former smoker
- - smoked at least 100 cigarettes in his/her lifetime and has not smoked at all during the past 30 days.
- Experimental smoker
- - has smoked at least one whole cigarette and has smoked in the last 30 days.
- Former experimental smoker
- - has smoked at least one whole cigarette, has not smoked 100 or more cigarettes in his/her lifetime and has not smoked at all in the past 30 days.
- Puffer
- - someone who has just tried a few puffs of a cigarette, but has never smoked a whole cigarette.
- Ever tried a cigarette
- - someone who has ever tried a cigarette, even a few puffs.
- Never tried a cigarette
- - someone who has never tried a cigarette, not even a few puffs.
- Smoking continuum
- - progression of smoking from trying the first puff to the first whole cigarette, to becoming a current smoker.
- Prevalence of smoking
- - the proportion of cigarette smokers in the target population.
- Amount smoked
- - the average number of cigarettes smoked per day by daily smokers.
- Average age
- - varies with the age and characteristics of the population surveyed. In the case of tobacco use, it refers to students in grades 6 to 12, for alcohol and drugs, to students in grades 7 to 12. The average age should therefore not be compared to that of a different grade category or population.
- Social Sources of cigarettes
- - family/friend/someone gives them / take from family member / buy from friend or someone else / ask someone to buy them.
- Binge drinking
- - an episode of drinking in which 5 or more drinks are consumed on one occasion.
- 95% confidence interval
- - This provides a range of values in which the estimated prevalence will fall 95% of the time (i.e. 19 times out of 20).