Reliability of children's self-reported cigarette smoking

Youth who first smoke cigarettes during childhood are a high risk for habit ual smoking. Evaluating the reliability of children's smoking initiation is essential to research efforts tb explain or prevent smoking onset. The pre sent study is the first to establish reliability of self-reported smoking b ehavior with questionnaire data from elementary school children (N = 1,184) . Data from a longitudinal investigation are used to examine the consistenc y of children's self-reported smoking across items and over time. Both cros s-sectional and longitudinal analyses demonstrate that children report havi ng tried smoking and lifetime use remarkably consistently. However, only ab out half the children reliably estimated their grade at first use. The stud y results suggest that some but not all standard questionnaire items yield reliable self-report data about initial smoking behavior from respondents a s young as 8 to 11 years. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd.