Person—tobacco smoking start age (daily smoking), total years NN

Identifying and definitional attributes

• Health, Superseded 19/11/2015

Public health and health care

Value domain attributes

Representational attributes

Data element attributes

Collection and usage attributes

Record age in completed years.

This information is relevant only if a person currently smokes daily or has smoked daily in the past.

The recommended standard for collecting this information is the Standard Questions on the Use of Tobacco Among Adults (1998) - interviewer administered (Question 7) and self-administered (Question 4) versions. The questions cover persons aged 18 years and over.

Start-age may be used to derive duration of smoking, which is a much stronger predictor of the risks associated with smoking than is the total amount of tobacco smoked over time.

Where the information is collected by survey and the sample permits, population estimates should be presented by sex and age groups. The recommended age groups are: <10, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20-24, 25-29 and 30. Summary statistics may need to be adjusted for age and other relevant variables.

It is recommended that in surveys of smoking, data on age, sex and other socio-demographic variables should be collected. It is also recommended that when smoking is investigated in relation to health, data on other risk factors including pregnancy status, physical activity, overweight and obesity, and alcohol consumption should be collected.

Relational attributes