Monitoring of non-cigarette tobacco use using Google Trends

• Published in: Tobacco control 2015-05, Vol.24 (3), p.249-255
• Main Authors: Cavazos-Rehg, Patricia A, Krauss, Melissa J, Spitznagel, Edward L, Lowery, Ashley, Grucza, Richard A, Chaloupka, Frank J, Bierut, Laura Jean
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Adolescent; Adult; Behavior; Child; Cigarettes; Cigars; Correlation coefficient; Disease control; Drug use; Electronic cigarettes; Health risk assessment; Health risks; Humans; Internet; Mortality; Population; Queries; Response rates; Risk taking; Search engines; Search strategies; Searches; Students; Studies; Tax increases; Tobacco; Tobacco industry; Tobacco Products - utilization; Tobacco Use - epidemiology; Tobacco Use - trends; Trends; United States - epidemiology; Validity; Young Adult
• ISSN: 0964-4563; 1468-3318
• DOI: 10.1136/tobaccocontrol-2013-051276

Background Google Trends is an innovative monitoring system with unique potential to monitor and predict important phenomena that may be occurring at a population level. We sought to validate whether Google Trends can additionally detect regional trends in youth and adult tobacco use. Methods We compared 2011 Google Trends relative search volume data for cigars, cigarillos, little cigars and smokeless tobacco with state prevalence of youth (grades 9–12) and adult (age 18 and older) use of these products using data from the 2011 United States state-level Youth Risk Behaviors Surveillance System and the 2010–2011 United States National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), respectively. We used the Pearson correlation coefficient to measure the associations. Results We found significant positive correlations between state Google Trends cigar relative search volume and prevalence of cigar use among youth (r=0.39, R2 = 0.154, p=0.018) and adults (r=0.49, R2 = 0.243, p