Step 1.1: Subject Classification and Matching Questions
These questions were used to classify research subjects as cases or controls (shown in red), determine a score for level of nicotine addiction of case subjects (shown in blue), and collect information about characteristics used to match cases and controls (i.e. make sure that the two groups have similar distributions for these characteristics).
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1. Explore subject classification and matching questions:
Select a row/item you want to check (definition of colors)
| Color |
Question ID |
Purpose of question type |
| Red | 1-4, 102 | Determining whether subject is a case or control |
| Blue | 5-11 | Determining whether smokers qualify to be cases (see reading on Fagerstrom Test for Nicotine Dependence) |
| Green | 74, 75, 76, 78 | Matching cases and controls for age, sex, ethnicity, and race |
| Purple | 73, 77, 79, 84 | Learning other demographic information about subject |
| Purple | 23-25 | Learning about cases or controls, but not both |
| Purple | 44, 57, 81 | Learning about multiple responses to a question (These questions are not useful for some types of analysis) |
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2. Data
Selected question:
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| Key |
Answer |
Cases |
Controls |
Total |
Note: the graph may not visualize all the numbers in table correctly for some questions. If they are different, please refer to those in the table.
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The questions used to determine whether a subject qualifies as a case or a control.
Questions about the characteristics shared by the cases and controls (we want the two groups to have similar distributions of males and females, ages from 25 to 54, and ethnic and racial groups).
Your broad hypothesis from smoker profiles, your intuition/observations, and past research
Is the way people organize data in a case control study. It tells you how many smokers and how many nonsmokers fall into the exposed or not exposed categories. How you define exposed and not exposed depends on how you drag and drop the answers to this question.
The confidence interval is a tool to help you decide if your result is meaningful to the entire population- people in general. If the confidence interval has the number 1.00 in it, this means that even if your Odds Ratio is bigger or smaller than 1.00, there is not an association between the exposure you identified and regular smokers. However if 1.00 is not inside your Confidence Interval, this means there is an association between the exposure and becoming a regular smoker.
The factor you think might have an influence on someone becoming a regular smoker. For example, believing smoking is not harmful for your health OR having a least 1 parent who smoked.
The factor you think might protect people from becoming regular smokers. For example, believing smoking is harmful for your health OR not having a parent who smoked.
The total number of people who responded to this question, both cases and controls.
An odds ratio of 1 means there is no difference between regular smokers and nonsmokers.
People who are regular smokers
People who tried or experimented with smoking but never became regular smokers