Resource Details

The Tobacco Use Supplement to the Current Population Survey (TUS-CPS) is an NCI-sponsored survey of tobacco use that has been administered as part of the US Census Bureau's Current Population Survey in 1992-1993, 1995-1996, 1998-1999, 2000, 2001-2002, 2003, and 2006-2007. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has been a co-sponsor with NCI since 2001-02.

The TUS-CPS is a key source of national and state level data on smoking and other tobacco use in the US household population because it uses a large, nationally representative sample that contains information on about 240,000 individuals within a given survey period. Other characteristics of the survey are:

• Civilian, non-institutionalized population ages 15 years and older;
• National, state, and some substate-specific estimates;
• State sample sizes range from 2,100 for the District of Columbia to 18,700 for California;
• 70% of respondents conduct survey by telephone and 30% of respondents conduct survey in person; and
• Mostly self-reports (about 20% are by proxy for a few measures of use).

These data can be used by researchers to:

• monitor progress in the control of tobacco use;
• conduct tobacco-related research; and
• evaluate tobacco control programs.