Interviewing young people about vaping, triangulating in from national data
Client and setting
A public health team in a metropolitan borough of around 280,000 residents
The challenge
The council knew vaping among young people was rising but had nothing local to work with. National surveys do not go down to borough level. Schools disagreed about how serious the problem was. Nobody could say why young people started, what they thought the harms were, or who they would go to for help. Decisions about prevention and messaging were being made on assumption.
What we did
Started with interviews with headteachers, which showed how differently schools saw the problem, and used that to shape the fieldwork.
Wrote the interview schedule with the council’s detached youth work team, who ran an after-school session locally and spoke to just over 50 young people aged 12 to 18.
Followed up with an anonymous online survey through three secondary schools and sixth forms, which returned around 110 responses in five days.
Analysed the interviews by theme and the survey by age and sex, and said clearly where the numbers were too small to draw conclusions from.
The outcome
About one in five respondents said they vaped frequently or daily. More than 80% already thought vaping was unhealthy, so awareness of harm was not the problem. Around half got their information from social media and fewer than half knew any support existed. The council could put its effort into sources young people trust, and into help for those who want to stop.
Timescale and team
Fieldwork and analysis over about two months, within a wider needs assessment. A partner and two public health analysts, with the council’s youth outreach team.
