Want create site? Find Free WordPress Themes and plugins.

The Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey issued a statement recently shining a light on a fairly glaring issue with almost all surveys of electronic cigarette use to date. The problem is simple: for the purposes of these surveys, an individual is considered a current user if he or she has used an electronic cigarette once in the last 30 days.

You can read the report here.

The main problem with this kind of metric for what constitutes a current user is that it alters the way the data may be perceived. It dramatically influences what the studies find to be current and active use of the products. But most importantly for opponents of the electronic cigarette industry, it makes it easier to make e-cigs look like they have ensnared a greater number of users — particularly teens.

This occurs, in part, because it’s difficult to nail down exactly what constitutes a current or — the more appropriate term — established user. It also makes it far easier to create the kind of statistic that media find easy to copy, paste, and relay to the public.

Research outlets like to create statistics that are easy for media use even if they might be slightly misleading. This happened recently when the CDC claimed that some 1.8 million teens in the US had tried e-cigs based on a fairly small sample of the demographic. The number was little more than a wild guess, but its relative simplicity has caused it to show up in nearly every story, report, and statement about electronic cigarettes to date.

The report from Rutgers Cancer Institute goes on to say that understanding and delineating the difference between trial of electronic cigarettes and established use is an important part of understanding their role. Studies that inaccurately report large swaths of e-cig trial as current use only skew numbers that would otherwise be far more useful.