Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health (PATH) Study [United States] Public-Use Files (ICPSR 36498)

Version Date: Jun 14, 2017 View help for published

Principal Investigator(s): View help for Principal Investigator(s)
United States Department of Health and Human Services. National Institutes of Health. National Institute on Drug Abuse; United States Department of Health and Human Services. Food and Drug Administration. Center for Tobacco Products

Series:

https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR36498.v6

Version V6 ()

  • V21 [2024-10-11]
  • V20 [2024-06-14] unpublished
  • V19 [2023-12-15] unpublished
  • V18 [2023-09-18] unpublished
  • V17 [2022-10-07] unpublished
  • V16 [2021-12-16] unpublished
  • V15 [2021-11-11] unpublished
  • V14 [2021-10-11] unpublished
  • V13 [2021-09-30] unpublished
  • V12 [2021-09-29] unpublished
  • V11 [2020-10-21] unpublished
  • V10 [2019-11-21] unpublished
  • V9 [2019-11-11] unpublished
  • V8 [2018-09-28] unpublished
  • V7 [2018-05-01] unpublished
  • V6 [2017-06-14] unpublished

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Additional information about this collection can be found in Version History.

2017-06-14 The Wave 1 data files were updated to correct minor errors along with the questionnaires to correct minor typos and clarify specifications. The Wave 2 data files, questionnaires, and codebooks were added to the study collection. Also, the Master Linkage data file was added to facilitate merging respondent records across waves. The User Guide and Master Tobacco Brand and Product Code Guide were expanded to include information about Wave 2.

2017-04-27 A minor revision was made to the Wave 1 Adult questionnaire. Two Excel crosswalks, one for Adults and one for Youth, were added to the available documentation to highlight the differences between the Wave 1 and Wave 2 files.

2017-04-03 An update was made to internal files to correct an issue with how missing values are displayed online through ICPSR's variables database.

2017-01-31 The variable R01X_CB_REGION in both the Wave 1 Adult and Youth/Parent files was updated to correct an error in the value labels. The values for codes 2 and 3 had been inadvertently swapped. The data did not change; only the value labels for codes 2 and 3 have been corrected.

2016-11-28 An additional 40 derived variables were added to the end of the Wave 1 Youth / Parent file that are similar to those already in the Wave 1 Adult file. Information for individuals who withdrew from the study is denoted in the datasets by the special missing value -97777.

2016-08-01 ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection:

  • Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.

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PATH Study (PUF)

The Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health (PATH) Study began originally surveying 45,971 adult and youth respondents. The PATH Study was launched in 2011 to inform FDA's regulatory activities under the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act (TCA). The PATH Study is a collaboration between the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the Center for Tobacco Products (CTP), Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The study sampled over 150,000 mailing addresses across the United States to create a national sample of tobacco users and non-users.

These 45,971 individuals constitute the first (baseline) annual wave of data collected by this longitudinal cohort study. Respondents are asked to complete an interview at each follow-up wave. Youth who turn 18 by the current wave of data collection are considered "aged-up adults" and are invited to complete the Adult Interview. Additionally, 7,207 "shadow youth" (youth ages 9 to 11 sampled at Wave 1) are considered "aged-up youth" upon turning 12 when they are asked to join the study subsequent to parental consent. Please refer to the User Guide that provides further details about these children designated as "shadow youth". At each subsequent wave of data collection, the parents of sampled youth are invited to complete a short Parent Interview about his or her child(ren).

Dataset 0001 (DS0001) contains the data from the Master Linkage file. This file contains 4 variables and 53,178 cases. The file provides a master list of every person's unique identification number and what type of respondent they were for each wave.

Dataset 1001 (DS1001) contains the data from the Wave 1 Adult Interview. This data file contains 1,731 variables and 32,320 cases. Each of the cases represents a single, completed interview.

Dataset 1002 (DS1002) contains the data from the Wave 1 Youth (and Parent) Interviews. This file contains 1,228 variables and 13,651 cases.

Dataset 2001 (DS2001) contains the data from the Wave 2 Adult Interview. This data file contains 2,195 variables and 28,362 cases. Of these cases, 26,447 also completed a Wave 1 Adult Interview. The other 1,915 cases are "aged-up adults" having previously completed a Wave 1 Youth Interview.

Dataset 2002 (DS2002) contains the data from the Wave 2 Youth Interview. This data file contains 1,389 variables and 12,172 cases. Of these cases, 10,081 also completed a Wave 1 Youth Interview. The other 2,091 cases are aged-up youth respondents having previously been flagged as "shadow youth".

Each case in an Adult data file represents a single, completed interview. Each case in a Youth data file represents one youth and his or her parent's responses about that youth. Parents who provided permission for their child to participate in a Youth Interview were asked to complete a brief interview about their child. In both waves of data collection less than 0.5 percent of the parents did not complete an interview. Most questions are asked in reference to the child.

In Wave 1, about 88 percent of the "parent" respondents were the biological mother or father. When multiple youth from the same household were selected to be in the study, the parent(s) completed separate interviews about each youth. If one parent completed two or more interviews that parent only answered questions about himself/herself once. Those questions were then skipped in the subsequent interview(s) for the other child(ren) and the responses duplicated in that child(ren)'s data file(s).

United States Department of Health and Human Services. National Institutes of Health. National Institute on Drug Abuse, and United States Department of Health and Human Services. Food and Drug Administration. Center for Tobacco Products. Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health (PATH) Study [United States] Public-Use Files. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2017-06-14. https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR36498.v6

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United States Department of Health and Human Services. National Institutes of Health. National Institute on Drug Abuse, United States Department of Health and Human Services. Food and Drug Administration. Center for Tobacco Products.

Census Region

Users are reminded that these data are to be used solely for statistical analysis and reporting of aggregated information, and not for the investigation of specific individuals or organizations.

Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research
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2013 -- 2014 (Wave 1), 2014 -- 2015 (Wave 2)
2013-09 -- 2014-12 (Wave 1), 2014-10 -- 2015-10 (Wave 2)
  1. The PATH Study Data User Forum allows researchers using the PATH Study data, public-use and restricted-use, to communicate with each other to ask and answer questions. Announcements, data releases and updates, new publications, upcoming events, and other information for PATH Study data users will also be posted to the forum.
  2. The data files contain a person-level (PERSONID) variable allowing linking of people across waves of data collection. The values in this variable are random and contain no direct or indirect personally identifiable information. Please review Chapter 7 in the User Guide for information on linking files together. The files are sorted by the variable PERSONID.
  3. ICPSR attempted to duplicate all information contained in the questionnaires into the question text used in the PDF codebooks. Some of the longer programming instructions were not incorporated into the question text. In these cases the question text includes a note pointing to the questionnaire so that a user may read the full programming instructions for further clarity. Derived and imputed variables contain the algorithms used in the creation of these variables. Users are advised to refer to the User Guide and annotated questionnaires when reviewing the codebooks.
  4. Some variables were withheld to limit releasing information that is a potential risk for disclosure. These variables are listed in Appendix B in the User Guide.
  5. The Youth Interview and Parent Interview instruments were distinct and separate instruments used in data collection. However, for each wave both instruments have been combined into a single document since the responses to these instruments are also combined into a single file.

  6. Both the Adult and Youth instruments in each wave include several questions about tobacco brands and products the respondent usually uses and most recently used. For each question, a list of response options was displayed on the computer screen for the respondent to select. For a large number of major brands and products, the displayed list included both a text label and a thumbnail image of the brand logo or product package. The displayed list was different for each of the tobacco product types with the brands and products listed being those that were known to exist for the specific tobacco product type. Because these lists are long, they are not provided in a frequency table for each variable in the codebook or in the annotated instrument. For convenience, both the Adult and Youth codebook contains an appendix that provides a frequency table of the top 20 responses for each variable. The PATH Study Master Tobacco Brand and Product Code Guide is available as an Excel workbook file [Documentation.xlsx (Tobacco_Brand)]. The spreadsheets in this Excel workbook file are protected and may not be edited. However, the last spreadsheet contains filters to narrow the complete list. This particular spreadsheet is the master file of all brand and product responses for these questions from both Wave 1 and Wave 2, including any responses that were not in the list of options displayed to the respondent.
  7. Variables containing demographic and health history data about the youth were mostly collected in the parent interview, except for a few items that youth responded to in the Youth Interview; however, since emancipated youths have no parent in their household, they responded to all of these items for themselves as part of the Youth Interview. As a result, the variables for Youth Interview questions asked only of emancipated youths were coded as "Inapplicable" for all other youths; similarly, the corresponding Parent Interview variables were coded as "Inapplicable" for emancipated youths.

  8. In both the Adult and Youth / Parent data files several groups of variables contain the word "RANDOM" in both the variable name and label. This indicates computerized randomization of the question order. These "RANDOM" variables detail the order in which the questions were asked for a particular respondent.

  9. The Wave 1 data files, for both Adults and Youth, contain a section about tobacco advertising. There are 20 variable triplets contained in this section. The computer randomly selected 20 advertisements and then asked the respondents whether they had seen the ad and whether they liked the ad. The Image ID variable (_AD) identifies the advertisement that was displayed to the respondent to characterize the ad, e.g., the tobacco product and brand. However, vendors did not grant permission to release the actual .jpg and .bmp files containing the images seen by respondents.

  10. Derived and imputed demographic variables (age, sex, Hispanic ethnicity, and race) are included near the end of each data file. The Adult file also contains education. An accompanying imputation flag variable is also included. These variables are distinguished by the variable name starting with "R0#R" and contain the word "DERIVED" or "IMPUTED" in the variable label. Imputed variables are only available on the Wave 1 data files.

  11. All Adult and Youth/Parent data files contain additional derived variables. These variables can be distinguished by the variable name starting with "R0#R" and contain the word "DERIVED" in the variable label. There are several variables for each tobacco category to identify certain classes of current and former tobacco users.

  12. Within the "Derived and Imputed Variables" section of the PDF codebooks for both files there is one geographic variable - Census Region.

  13. In accordance with the study's informed consent, information is suppressed about individuals that withdraw from the PATH Study. Their information was recoded to a special missing value, designated as -97777.

  14. The current release contains the public-use versions of Wave 1 and Wave 2 data files. Wave 3 data files are tentatively planned to be released in 2018.

  15. The documentation file titled Documentation.pdf (Informed_Consent) includes the six consent forms provided to and signed by the respondents for the various types of interviews conducted and biological samples collected. Participants provide consent at their initial interview and biological sample collection; consents remain in effect for subsequent waves. Aged-up adults who previously responded to the Youth Interview at one wave need to re-consent at the time of the subsequent wave.
  16. Another documentation file is a Non-Response Bias Analysis Report for Wave 1 which details the response rates and the potential for bias from non-response.

  17. The Informed Consent Document and Non-Response Bias Analysis Report are specific to Wave 1. They are listed for both the Adult File (DS1001) and the Youth / Parent File (DS1002), but they are the same file.

  18. The questionnaires in this collection are updated versions of the fielded questionnaires that were annotated for analytic purposes. Spanish versions of the instruments are available on the restricted-use files home page.

  19. Additional background information including answers to frequently asked questions for study participants and researchers can be found in the Researchers section of the PATH Study series page.

  20. The User Guide provides an overview of the entire PATH Study. The guide covers topics such as sample design, data collection, weighting, response rates, and programming syntax to run common statistics and linking the files together. Researchers should feel free to use the information in the User Guide for their publication and the guide should be cited as follows:

    • United States Department of Health and Human Services. National Institutes of Health. National Institute on Drug Abuse, and United States Department of Health and Human Services. Food and Drug Administration. Center for Tobacco Products. Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health (PATH) Study [United States] Public-Use Files, User Guide. ICPSR36498-v6 Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2017-06-14. http://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR36498.userguide
  21. The data for the PATH Study was collected and prepared by Westat. The contract number under which they performed their work is: HHSN271201100027C.

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The Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health (PATH) Study is a longitudinal cohort study on tobacco use behavior, attitudes and beliefs, and tobacco-related health outcomes among an estimated 46,000 adults and youth in the United States. Taken directly from the PATH Study web site, the study's primary objectives are to:

  • Objective 1: Identify and explain between-person differences and within-person changes in tobacco-use patterns, including the rate and length of use by specific product type and brand, product/brand switching over time, uptake of new products, and dual- and poly-use of tobacco products (i.e., use of multiple products within the same time period, and switching between multiple products).
  • Objective 2: Identify between-person differences and within-person changes in risk perceptions regarding harmful and potentially harmful constituents, new and emerging tobacco products, filters and other design features of tobacco products, packaging, and labeling; and, identify other factors that may affect use, such as social influences and individual preferences.
  • Objective 3: Characterize the natural history of tobacco dependence, cessation, and relapse including readiness and self-efficacy to quit, motivations for quitting, the number and length of quit attempts, and the length of abstinence related to various tobacco products.
  • Objective 4: Update the comprehensive baseline and subsequent waves of data on tobacco-use behaviors and related health conditions (including markers of exposure and tobacco-related disease processes identified from the collection and analysis of biospecimens) to assess between-person differences and within-person changes over time in health conditions potentially related to tobacco use, particularly with use of new and different tobacco products, including modified-risk tobacco products. Each wave may also facilitate the selection of individuals by disease status, biomarker levels, or tobacco use status for participation in small-scale research studies (see Objective 8).
  • Objective 5: Assess associations between TCA-specific actions and tobacco-product use, risk perceptions and attitudes, use patterns, cessation outcomes, and tobacco-related intermediate endpoints (e.g., exposure and disease biomarker levels). Analyses will attempt to account for other potential factors, such as demographics, local tobacco-control policies, and social, familial, and economic factors, that may influence the observed patterns.
  • Objective 6: Assess between-person differences and within-person changes over time in attitudes, behaviors, exposures to tobacco products, and related biomarkers among and within population subgroups defined by racial-ethnic, gender, age, and risk factors (e.g., pregnancy or co-occurring substance use or mental health disorders).
  • Objective 7: To the extent to which sample sizes are sufficient, assess and compare samples of former and never users of tobacco products for between-person differences and within-person changes in relapse and uptake, risk perceptions, and indicators of tobacco exposure and disease processes.
  • Objective 8: Use the PATH Study's comprehensive baseline (i.e., Wave 1) and first follow-up wave (i.e., Wave 2) data on tobacco-use behaviors, attitudes, related health conditions (including markers of exposure, tobacco use-related disease processes identified from the collection and analysis of bio-specimens) as a potential basis to screen respondents for participation in small-scale research studies. Such studies would be submitted for approval to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), for example, through one of the PATH Study's two generic clearances for cognitive testing or for methodological studies, or as an embedded study within a revision request, such as a request to conduct a small-scale research study during a follow-up wave of data and bio-specimen collection.

The study sampled over 150,000 mailing addresses which, using a four-staged stratified sampling design, yielded a sample of 45,971 respondents (32,320 adults / 13,651 youth) who completed a Wave 1 interview. Tobacco users and non-users who were at least 12 years old living in a civilian, non-institutionalized setting were considered for participation during Wave 1. Youth who turn 18 by the next wave of data collection are considered "aged-up adults" and are invited to complete the Adult Interview. Additionally, 7,207 "shadow youth" (youth ages 9 to 11 sampled at Wave 1) are considered "aged-up youth" upon turning 12 when they are asked to join the study.

The Adult files contain a single record for every adult participant. The Youth / Parent files contain a single record of every youth who participated in a given wave. Parents who provided permission for their child to complete a Youth Interview were asked to complete a brief Parent Interview that contained questions about parental supervision, school performance, and tobacco use by youth. The Parent Interview is primarily an interview about the child(ren), not the parent. In both waves, almost all youth had a parent or guardian complete the Parent Interview (over 99.5 percent). When multiple youth from the same household were selected to be in the study, the parent(s) completed separate interviews about each youth. If one parent completed multiple interviews then questions asked about him or her were only asked once. Those questions were skipped in the other interview(s) and the responses duplicated for the other child(ren).

A $2 incentive was mailed to all addresses sampled at Wave 1 prior to screening. For both Wave 1 and Wave 2, adult respondents were paid $35 for their participation. Youth were paid $25 to complete the Youth Interview, and their parents were given $10 for each Parent Interview.

A four-stage stratified area probability sample design was used in the PATH Study, with a two-phase design for sampling adults at the final stage. At the first stage, a stratified sample of geographical primary sampling units (PSUs) was selected, in which a PSU is a county or group of counties. For the second stage, within each selected PSU, smaller geographical segments were formed and then a sample of these segments was drawn. At the third stage, the sampling frame consisted of the residential addresses located in these segments. The fourth stage selected adults and youth from the sampled households identified at these addresses, with varying sampling rates for adults by age, race, and tobacco use status. Adults were sampled in two phases - Phase 1 sampling used information provided in the household screener and Phase 2 sampling used information provided by the adult in the Phase 2 screener at the beginning of the adult instrument. Please consult the User Guide for additional details about the sampling.

Longitudinal: Panel

Users and non-users of tobacco products in the civilian, non-institutionalized household population of the United States aged 9 and older at the time of Wave 1.

individual

In both waves, adults and youth were asked about seven main types of tobacco products: cigarettes, e-cigarettes/electronic nicotine products, cigars (traditional, cigarillos, filtered), pipes, hookah, smokeless tobacco (snus pouches and other forms of smokeless tobacco), and dissolvable tobacco. Bidis and kreteks were additional types asked about on the Youth Interview, but were not asked on the Adult Interview. Although each section of tobacco products has some unique questions the majority of the questions fit into one of the following categories.

Tobacco Products

  • Ever use
  • Recency of use
  • Frequency of use
  • Amount of use
  • Brands used
  • Purchase details

Additional topics, in both files and in at least one wave, include:

  • Polyuse
  • Nicotine dependence
  • Packaging and health warnings
  • Risk and harm perceptions
  • Secondhand smoke exposure
  • Marketing and advertising
  • Media use
  • Demographics
  • Health
  • Psychosocial and mental health
  • Substance use
  • Cessation
  • Peer and family influences

Most questions asked in the questionnaires are categorical. Other questions ask, for example, the age at which something occurred or the person's body measurements. The responses to these are typically numerical.

  • Household screener: 54.1 percent (unweighted); 54.0 percent (weighted)
  • Wave 1 Adult Interview: 74.8 percent (unweighted); 74.0 percent (weighted)
  • Wave 1 Youth Interview: 78.2 percent (unweighted); 78.4 percent (weighted)

Please consult the User Guide for information regarding the response rates for data collected during Wave 2.

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2016-08-01

2017-06-14 The Wave 1 data files were updated to correct minor errors along with the questionnaires to correct minor typos and clarify specifications. The Wave 2 data files, questionnaires, and codebooks were added to the study collection. Also, the Master Linkage data file was added to facilitate merging respondent records across waves. The User Guide and Master Tobacco Brand and Product Code Guide were expanded to include information about Wave 2.

2017-04-27 A minor revision was made to the Wave 1 Adult questionnaire. Two Excel crosswalks, one for Adults and one for Youth, were added to the available documentation to highlight the differences between the Wave 1 and Wave 2 files.

2017-04-03 An update was made to internal files to correct an issue with how missing values are displayed online through ICPSR's variables database.

2017-01-31 The variable R01X_CB_REGION in both the Wave 1 Adult and Youth/Parent files was updated to correct an error in the value labels. The values for codes 2 and 3 had been inadvertently swapped. The data did not change; only the value labels for codes 2 and 3 have been corrected.

2016-11-28 An additional 40 derived variables were added to the end of the Wave 1 Youth / Parent file that are similar to those already in the Wave 1 Adult file. Information for individuals who withdrew from the study is denoted in the datasets by the special missing value -97777.

2016-08-01 ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection:

  • Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.

Hide

Each data file contains weights for use in analyses of the data from the complex PATH Study sample design. The final full-sample person-level weight for each wave of the Adult file is R0#_A_PWGT, and the final full-sample person-level weight for each wave of the Youth / Parent file is R0#_Y_PWGT. There are also 100 replicate weights and design variables (VARPSU and VARSTRAT) for use in variance estimation. Very detailed information on how these variables were created, and how and why they should be used is provided in the User Guide. One aspect to keep in mind is that the weighting procedures adjust for oversampling of certain population groups and non-response. ICPSR strongly recommends that researchers read and understand this section before analyzing the data so that these variables may be used in a correct manner.

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