Funding Agency: World Health Organization
Global Youth Tobacco Survey (GYTS) provides an insight into students’ knowledge, attitudes, and behaviours. Pakistan has implemented three rounds of GYTS in 2003-04, 2008-09 and 2013. The first two rounds were conducted at the regional level while the last round was conducted at the national level. The information gathered through these surveys was used for advocacy at all fora which attracted the attention of the policymakers, media and anti-tobacco advocates and tobacco control came into the limelight.
Keeping in view the post-devolution scenario in the country wherein the provinces have been given the autonomous status, there is a need to conduct the next round of GYTS at the national level in all four provinces and one region namely Punjab, Sindh, Baluchistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and Islamabad. The objectives of the survey were.
⦁ To monitor youth tobacco, use among youth and track key tobacco control indicators at national and regional levels
⦁ To generate comparable data within and across countries
⦁ To generate evidence for the policymakers to take adequate tobacco control measures
The survey was school-based and used a two-stage cluster sampling design. The sampling frame consists of all public schools containing students in grades 7-10 with ages 13-15. In the first stage, schools were selected with probability proportionate to school enrolment size. In the second stage, systematic equal probability sampling was done (with a random start) from each school. The sample size for the schools was 10031 students based on the previous sample of GYTS (8723) with 15% inflation and an 80% response rate. To achieve this, a total of 165 schools (33 from each province and federal capital) were selected.
The findings of the survey are available at following link.
https://www.emro.who.int/images/stories/ncds/global_youth_tobacco_turvey_pakistan2022.pdf