Smoking in school-aged teenagers: Design and validation of a six European cities social network survey

The social network survey was carried out in 2013 in six medium size European Cities having an average income similar to the national average : Namur (Belgium), Tampere (Finland), Hannover (Germany), Latina (Italy), Amersfoort (The Netherlands), Coimbra (Portugal).  In each city, 6 to 8 schools were selected in a cluster stratified sampling within two strata of schools, high and low SES schools.  In each school we selected two grades corresponding to the lower secondary education and, as much as possible, the grades corresponding to 14 to 16 years old group.  All students from these two grades were invited to participate to the survey.  The survey was designed to measure the association between teenagers social ties at school and their smoking behaviours.  Social ties were reported using the roster approach in which each adolescent had to nominate up to 5 alters from a complete directory.

Instruments used during the fieldwork are available here: