Behavior Change Tactics & Strategies

The Psychographics of Teen Vape Users: A New Research Paper

Written by Krysten Isaac | July 28, 2021 at 12:00 AM

According to CDC reports, vapes have been the most commonly used tobacco product among adolescents since 2014. Despite the prevalence of teen vaping, little is known about which youth are at the greatest risk, making it difficult to understand who should be prioritized in prevention efforts.

To identify and describe subgroups of adolescents who vape, researchers at Rescue Agency analyzed weighted, cross-sectional online survey data from 1,594 Virginia high school students. The new study, published in Tobacco Use Insights, describes the media habits, peer crowds, values, and other psychographics of teens who vape.

For the study, we compared vaping rates and frequency by peer crowd using a chi-square analysis with follow-up testing to identify higher-risk crowds and confirmed associations using binary and multinomial logistic regression models with peer crowd scores predicting vaping, controlling for demographics.

Read the full results of this analysis in “The Vaping Teenager: Understanding the Psychographics and Interests of Adolescent Vape Users to Inform Health Communication Campaigns."

If you’d like to learn more about teen psychographic segmentation, watch the following educational video from Rescue President & Executive Creative Director Jeff Jordan. Or visit our website to learn more about our approach to campaign research.