About the Smoking Data: MNPH Data Access - MN Dept. of Health
About the smoking data
- The percent of adults (18+ years of age) in Minnesota who are current and ever cigarette smokers
- The percent of Minnesota adults who are smokers by gender, race/ethnicity, education, income, and age
- If a measure is increasing or decreasing
A weighted percent is an adjustment of the crude percent (which is just the count divided by sample size or N) and takes into account variables like sampling design and characteristics of survey respondents (e.g. age, gender, race/ethnicity) to make the percentage generalizable to all Minnesota adults. Sample weighting is done so that unbiased population estimates can be calculated using the results of a survey.
- To inform the public about the proportion of the adult population that currently smokes or has ever smoked
- To explore trends in the percentage of current and ever smokers
- For program planning and evaluation by state and local partners
- These data cannot tell us how many people smoke at a county level
- These data cannot tell us duration of smoking or amount of cigarettes smoked by individuals
The Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), administered annually by the Minnesota Center for Health Statistics in collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). To learn more about BRFSS, including survey methodology (i.e. how participants are chosen) and full length questionnaires, visit CDC BRFSS.
For Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System purposes, a current smoker is defined as an individual who reports having smoked at least 100 cigarettes in their lifetime and who currently smokes some days or every day. Other tobacco products that can be smoked (also called ‘combustible tobacco products') such as cigars, cigarillos, and pipes are not accounted for in current smoking measures.
For Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System purposes, an ever smoker is defined as an individual who reports having smoked at least 100 cigarettes in their lifetime regardless of whether they currently smoke or have quit smoking. Other tobacco products that can be smoked (also called ‘combustible tobacco products') such as cigars, cigarillos, and pipes are not accounted for in ever smoking measures.
- The Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System administers questionnaires to a sample of Minnesota adults in households. It does not represent all Minnesota adults, such as those in long-term care facilities, nursing homes, the military or correctional institutions.
- BRFSS is a telephone survey and therefore does not reach adults who have no telephone. As with most surveys that rely on telephone interviewing, some subgroups, such as specific racial or ethnic minority communities, are likely to be underrepresented.
- Measures of cigarette smoking in Minnesota's adult population are derived from smoking status as self-reported by survey respondents. These individuals may refuse to answer specific questions or may misreport their smoking status. Individuals who have missing information for a given question due to refusal to answer or any other reason are excluded from analysis for corresponding measures.
- BRFSS data cannot be used to derive smoking measures for youth under 18 years of age. However, preventing tobacco use among youth and young adults remains a priority on the state and national levels. See the Minnesota Center for Health Statistics (MCHS) resources on the Minnesota Youth Tobacco Survey.
Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System data from 2011 or later should not be compared to earlier years of data. Prior to 2011, BRFSS only sampled adults in households with landline telephones. Beginning in 2011, BRFSS included adults who received the majority of their calls on cellular telephones. Also beginning in 2011, the weighting methodology changed to better account for underrepresented groups of people (such as young adults and racial/ethnic minorities) and allow for the incorporation of cellular telephone data. This new methodology reduces bias and increases the representativeness of estimates.
Unless otherwise noted, differences between groups described on the Smoking pages are statistically significant. A difference, increase, or decrease is indicated as "statistically significant" when the 95% confidence intervals for weighted percentages do not overlap. In statistics, this means that two or more estimates (i.e. percentages) are significantly different at the ±=0.05 significance level.
The Minnesota Adult Tobacco Survey (MATS) measured current, former, and ever smoking in the adult Minnesota population from 1999 to 2010 using definitions identical to BRFSS for current and ever smokers.
CDC BRFSS measures smoking status in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Guam. Four-level smoking status and current smoking status for each state/territory can be easily tracked using the Prevalence Data & Data Analysis Tools.
Sample size (N) by year for the BRFSS data includes only respondents who answered all questions used to derive smoking status.
| Survey Year | N |
|---|---|
| 2000 | 2,848 |
| 2001 | 3,952 |
| 2002 | 4,478 |
| 2003 | 3,865 |
| 2004 | 4,421 |
| 2005 | 2,810 |
| 2006 | 4,247 |
| 2007 | 4,768 |
| 2008 | 4,282 |
| 2009 | 5,597 |
| 2010 | 8,933 |
| 2011 | 15,319 |
| 2012 | 11,889 |
| 2013 | 13,794 |
| 2014 | 15,842 |
| 2015 | 16,327 |
| 2016 | 16,251 |
| 2017 | 16,427 |
| 2018 | 16,545 |
To explore technical information and full datasets by survey year, visit CDC BRFSS. For more information about the childhood lead exposure data and measures, contact MN Tracking.