Rethinking and reframing research on tobacco use in youth: Reflections based on a longitudinal investigation of Quebec adolescents
Cigarette use remains far too prevalent among Canadian youth – over 20% become and remain adult smokers, contributing a large preventable burden on health. Empirical research on tobacco use in youth began to be published in the 1950’s and has grown exponentially since then, with hundreds of articles published in the health and social science literatures each year. While much has been learned about the determinants and consequences of tobacco use, as well as about tobacco control interventions for youth, we believe that there is a need to reflect on, rethink, and perhaps reframe youth tobacco use research, moving outside of paradigms and methods that have dominated the field. The purpose of this article is to critically reflect on results emerging from a 12-year longitudinal study of smoking onset in Quebec youth, to identify potential contributions of this work to new ways of conceptualising and framing research on tobacco use in youth. We discuss six issues: adopting a broad socio-ecological perspective in research on determinants; moving towards collaborative interdisciplinary research, moving beyond cross-sectional study designs, recognizing that youth and adult smoking differs, moving towards gender-specific research, and investigating multiple phenotypes.