Cigarette smoking behaviour

Classification criteria

Information on cigarette smoking is classified into three categories – regular smoker, ex–smoker and never smoked regularly. The two criteria used in classifying responding units to the classification categories are current tobacco cigarette smoking behaviour and past tobacco cigarette smoking behaviour.

The criteria are applied to produce the following classification categories:

• Regular Smoker – someone who currently smokes one or more manufactured or hand rolled tobacco cigarettes per day.
• Ex-smoker – someone who does not now, but used to smoke one or more manufactured or hand rolled tobacco cigarettes per day.
• Never smoked regularly – someone who has never smoked manufactured or hand rolled tobacco cigarettes at all or smoked less than one per day.

The benchmark criterion of one cigarette per day is used to retain consistency with previous collections and is considered appropriate by users.

Classification

Cigarette smoking behaviour is a flat classification with 3 categories - excluding residual categories.

The residual categories are defined in Glossary and references.

The full classification is available on the main page.

Coding process

Only one response should be coded.

Where two or more responses are indicated, code to 'response unidentifiable'.

Where the response contains only part of the required information, code to 'response unidentifiable'.

Where no response has been given, code to 'not stated'.

Imputation is not recommended for this variable.