Smoking

• 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

• 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 living in long-term care facilities, nursing homes, military bases, 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 does not include people under 18 years of age. 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.

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.

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 p=0.05 significance level.

• 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.
• 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.

For more information about the smoking data and measures, contact the MN Data Access Portal.