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Risk Factor Monitoring & Methods
Cancer Control and Population Sciences
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What Is the TUS-CPS?

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;
  • 75% of respondents conduct survey by telephone and 25% of respondents conduct survey by personal home visit; 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.

Information from past Tobacco Use Supplements is contained in NCI's Tobacco Monographs. See Reports and Publications Using the TUS-CPS for a list of publications describing past TUS-CPS findings or utilizing some of the TUS-CPS data in conjunction with other health survey, registry, or other outcome data.

The TUS-CPS has been translated into Spanish and four Asian languages: Chinese, Khmer, Korean, and Vietnamese. Information about the translated questionnaires, including reports on the review and pretesting of the translations, and copies of the questionnaires in all available languages, is now available.

Download the TUS-CPS Fact Sheet.


Last modified:
06 Jan 2009
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