TUS-CPS Translations into Other Languages
In pursuing its mission to estimate patterns of tobacco use in the United States, NCI
is concerned about the potential for underestimating tobacco use among certain populations
and for misinterpreting aggregated survey estimates. For example, national surveys of
tobacco use often show relatively low smoking prevalence for Asian Americans. Results
from state and local surveys suggest that those national survey estimates may be too
low. One possible explanation may be that many national tobacco surveys rely on
English-language interviews to gather data from Asian Americans. Asian Americans with
limited fluency in English are likely to be excluded from participating in these
surveys.
To address these concerns, NCI has translated its 2003
Tobacco Use Supplement to the Current Population Survey (TUS-CPS)
1
into Chinese, Khmer, Korean, and Vietnamese. These
languages were chosen because they are spoken with the highest frequency among
members of the U.S. Asian-American household population.
The survey also was translated into Spanish to accommodate those in the population who
speak only Spanish or who prefer to take a survey in Spanish.
This process began with careful translation by teams of culturally and
linguistically-expert bilingual translators. The Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, and Spanish
translations were then subjected to a rigorous review and pretesting process that
included cognitive interview testing,
pretesting with an empirical pilot study of 347 respondents, respondent debriefing interviews, and
behavior coding of selected items. The
Khmer version is a recent addition to the list of languages the TUS-CPS has been
translated into, and it has not yet undergone extensive review or testing.
1: The version that was translated is the 2003 Tobacco Use Special Cessation
Supplement to the Current Population Survey (TUSCS-CPS), which is part of the continuing
series of Tobacco Use Supplements to the Current Population Survey.
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