C1.1 Smoking and e-cigarette use
All pupils were asked about their cigarette smoking behaviour and e-cigarette use, including whether they had ever smoked cigarettes/used e-cigarettes, and for those that had, the number and how often they smoked/the frequency and length of use of e-cigarettes. Pupils were categorised in three ways based on the responses given:
- Regular smokers/users (defined as usually smoking at least one cigarette per week/using an e-cigarette at least once per week);
- Occasional smokers/users (defined as usually smoking less than one cigarette per week/using an e-cigarette sometimes but less than once per week); or
- Non-smokers/non-users.
C1.2 Alcohol consumption
Pupils were asked about their alcohol use, with current drinkers being defined as pupils who had drunk alcohol at least once a week, once a fortnight, once a month or a few times a year.
C1.3 Drug use
Drug use prevalence measures (ever used / used in last year / used in last month) are derived from the answers to questions on whether they had heard of a drug, had they tried a drug and if so when they had last used the drug, for 16 different drug types (see the table in section C2).
If use of any of the 16 drug types is confirmed by the responses, then they are included as a positive (ever used / used in last year / used in last month), otherwise as a negative (never used).
In the absence of a positive response for any drug type (confirming drug use), if a pupil failed to provide a response for any of the drug types, then that pupil is excluded from the measure. This is because it is not possible to know whether that pupil had or hadn’t taken any of the 16 drug types. This does however create a situation where a non-response to just a single drug type can exclude that pupil from the measure.
Note that if a pupil said that they had not heard of, or not tried that drug, then they do not have to answer any more questions about that particular drug and are recorded as having ‘not used’ that drug.
