Smoking behavior. We examined 3 outcomes
of interest: lifetime, current, and regular
smoking. We based each variable on youths’
self-reports and coded them as binary. We
based lifetime smoking on responses to the
NSCAW question ‘‘In your whole life, on how
many days have you smoked a cigarette?’’ and
coded the variable as ‘‘yes’’ if the youth re-
ported smoking any days, and on the Add
Health question ‘‘Have you ever tried cigarette
smoking, even just 1 or 2 puffs?’’ which we also
coded as yes/no. Consistent with research in
this area, we operationalized current smoking
on the basis of whether the youth had smoked
in the last 30 days: ‘‘In the last 30 days, on
how many days did you smoke a cigarette?’’
(NSCAW) and ‘‘During the past 30 days, on
how many days did you smoke cigarettes?’’
(Add Health), with both being coded as ‘‘yes’’ if
the youth had smoked at all in the previous 30
days. Finally, regular smoking included only
those youths who had smoked in the last 30
days. Those who had smoked on 20 or more
days in the last 30 days were coded as regular
smokers.