{"id":31390,"date":"2025-11-21T11:45:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-21T11:45:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/?p=31390"},"modified":"2025-11-21T11:45:17","modified_gmt":"2025-11-21T11:45:17","slug":"youth-vape-risk-measures-may-be-overstated-suggests-new-study","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/en\/post\/youth-vape-risk-measures-may-be-overstated-suggests-new-study\/","title":{"rendered":"Youth vape risk measures may be overstated, suggests new study"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"clear-before-content-2\" style=\"margin-top: 20px;margin-bottom: 20px;margin-left: auto;margin-right: auto;text-align: center;\" id=\"clear-2748604754\"><img src=\"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/caafc5c68900198b80aee12c11b50184.avif\" alt=\"\"   style=\"display: inline-block;\" \/><\/div>\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Only 51.9 per cent of youth who said they might vape went on to try it within four years.<\/strong><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>28.8 per cent of youth who said they definitely wouldn\u2019t vape tried it anyway.<\/strong><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>The measure did not reliably identify which young people would vape.<\/strong><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Findings \u201cquestion the public health relevance of susceptibility as a proxy for use\u201d and raise questions about aggressive vape regulations.<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Standard tools used to predict how likely young people are to start vaping may be overstating risk, according to a new preprint study.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/osf.io\/3hcfx\/files\/e8vnm\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">The findings<\/a> raise questions about the common use of \u201csusceptibility\u201d &#8211; a measure of whether a young person is open to trying vaping &#8211; in research and policy discussions about youth vaping.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The study analysed data from the Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health (PATH) Study, focusing on youth aged 12 to 17 who had never used vapes or cigarettes. It followed participants over a four-year period to assess whether they went on to experiment with or regularly use nicotine products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The research was led by <a href=\"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/en\/post\/voices-of-harm-reduction-pt-8-arielle-selya\/\">Dr Arielle Selya<\/a>, Senior Scientist at Pinney Associates, and examined whether a \u2018three-item susceptibility scale\u2019 could reliably predict behaviour at the individual level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Not accurate for predicting real-life behaviour<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>The results suggest that susceptibility does not accurately indicate which young people will go on to vape. The study found that \u201cfor a given ENDS-na\u00efve youth who reported susceptibility to ENDS use, 51.9 per cent tried ENDS, and 15.3 per cent developed established use, within four years.\u201d This means nearly half of those who indicated they were open to vaping never vaped at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>At the same time, a significant number of youth who initially said they had no intention to vape later tried it anyway. According to the study, \u201csome non-susceptible youth later tried ENDS (28.8 per cent) and cigarettes (12.5 per cent), despite initially stating intentions not to.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Researchers described the match between susceptibility and real behaviour as weak. \u201cThe concordance between susceptibility and use was slight (Cohen\u2019s Kappa=0.22 or lower).\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>While the measure was relatively effective at ruling out who would not vape, \u201cthis came at the cost of low positive predictive value,\u201d meaning it often failed to identify those who would.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Implications for youth vaping research and regulation<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Susceptibility is a common tool used in youth tobacco research and is often treated as a stand-in for actual behaviour. It\u2019s used in studies evaluating advertising, product risks and regulatory impacts.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The authors observe that \u201csusceptibility is often used as a proxy for use,\u201d under the assumption that attitudes measured through survey questions reflect future actions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>However, the findings challenge the strength of that assumption. The study \u201cquestion[s] the public-health relevance of susceptibility as a proxy for use\u201d and confirms \u201cpredictive validity of susceptibility would be limited.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>While previous studies have shown that youth who express susceptibility are more likely overall to try vaping, the lead authors note that \u201ca statistically significant association between susceptibility and actual use does not necessarily translate into useful predictive validity.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In other words, just because susceptibility correlates with behaviour at the group level doesn\u2019t mean it accurately predicts individual decisions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>What the findings mean<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>As discussions around youth vaping and regulation continue, this research suggests that caution is needed when interpreting susceptibility data as evidence of future behaviour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Wider debate: does vaping slow smoking declines?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>The study comes amid <a href=\"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/en\/post\/expert-debunks-claims-that-vaping-slowed-smoking-declines-down-under\/\">a debate in Australia and New Zealand<\/a>, where some researchers argue that vaping has \u201cslowed the rates of decline in ever and regular-smoking\u201d among teenagers. A series of papers led by the University of Sydney\u2019s Professor Becky Freeman suggested that youth smoking would have fallen faster without vaping.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But other experts, including Dr Arielle Selya, question those conclusions. She notes that the claims hinge on the assumption that smoking rates would have continued to fall at the same pace in the absence of vaping, an assumption she describes as \u201cquestionable.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Looking at the data, she said she did \u201cnot see a visually-evident change in smoking trends\u201d in Australia and suggested that any small uptick in New Zealand is unlikely to be caused by vapes, writing: \u201cI do find it plausible that there was a bump in smoking in New Zealand youth, but.. I don\u2019t think it makes sense to attribute this to e-cigarettes.\u201d<\/p>\n<div class=\"clear-after-content-2\" style=\"margin-top: 20px;margin-bottom: 20px;margin-left: auto;margin-right: auto;text-align: center;\" id=\"clear-2686776976\"><img src=\"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/caafc5c68900198b80aee12c11b50184.avif\" alt=\"\"   style=\"display: inline-block;\" \/><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Standard tools used to predict how likely young people are to start vaping may be overstating risk, according to a new preprint study.\u00a0 The findings raise questions about the common use of \u201csusceptibility\u201d &#8211; a measure of whether a young person is&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":990002,"featured_media":31391,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[257,259],"tags":[344,342,186],"slider":[],"class_list":["post-31390","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-science","tag-australia","tag-new-zealand","tag-nicotine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31390","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/990002"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31390"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31390\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31398,"href":"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31390\/revisions\/31398"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31391"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31390"},{"taxonomy":"slider","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clearingtheair.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/slider?post=31390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}