UEA To Investigate Attitudes to Vaping Kids
The University is looking at parent and guardian attitudes towards children vaping.
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by Dave Cross
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“This new study,” states Mustard News, “is being taken on by the UEA’s new addiction research group is to investigate the attitudes of parents and carers towards children’s use of e-cigarettes. It’s all thanks to a £45,000 grant from Cancer Research UK’s Tobacco Advisory Group.”
Speaking about the research is Dr. Caitlin Notley, UK Society for the Study of Addiction Research Fellow - Norwich Medical School, University of East Anglia.
To the question why the research needs to be carried out, Notley responds: “We know very little about the way parents and carers are using e-cigarettes within the home. The principle investigator for the study, Dr. Jeremy Turner, had anecdotally heard that parents were allowing their children to use electronic cigarettes within the home – or buying particular devices when their children had requested them. We don’t have any research evidence to tell us what the patterns and experiences of using e-cigarettes are. So this study is looking to fill that gap in our understanding.”
The doctor believes that there still isn’t enough research being done so that current state of play is: “pretty much a blank canvas; although more studies are being done as funding is being put into this evolving area of research.” Of concern to her is the lack of understanding about the patterns of use, what devices are being used, by whom, in what situations and how those devices are used.
“Something that the media has been very concerned with is that very young children may be attracted to these devices,” she added. “There’s controversy around some of the flavourings. Like the whole alcopops argument, perhaps some of these flavourings could be suggested as being marketed towards children.” But before anybody gets annoyed, she continues: “We don’t have any evidence really to support that.”
The research will be carried out as an online survey in the first instance. It aims to target at least 2,000 parents with 11 to 18-year olds in their home. The trouble with this approach is that only motivated parents will hunt out the survey in order to fill it in. The next stage of the process will involve a direct interview, with selected respondents in Norfolk and London, looking at patterns and conditions of use. This will be run alongside a fact-finding aspect where researchers will question head teachers about school policies along with the informal advice they give to parents and children.
“What we do know anecdotally is that people have very different views towards the use of electronic cigarettes and vaping. Many people see them as a safer alternative to cigarettes and, indeed, that is supported by research evidence.”
One of the desired outcomes from the study is the formation of messages to give to high school-age children. Secondly, they hope to be able to feed back advice and suggestions to schools in how and what they say in future.
On a very positive note, the doctor dismisses the scare stories in the media or shared anecdotally from non-vapers: “they’re not really supported by research evidence and it’s important that we have [it] there rather than pay too much heed to possible scare stories.”
Dave Cross
Journalist at POTVDave is a freelance writer; with articles on music, motorbikes, football, pop-science, vaping and tobacco harm reduction in Sounds, Melody Maker, UBG, AWoL, Bike, When Saturday Comes, Vape News Magazine, and syndicated across the Johnston Press group. He was published in an anthology of “Greatest Football Writing”, but still believes this was a mistake. Dave contributes sketches to comedy shows and used to co-host a radio sketch show. He’s worked with numerous start-ups to develop content for their websites.
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