Student-led Evaluation of the McMaster University Tobacco and Smoke-Free Campus Policy
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: McMaster University is a Canadian post-secondary institution focused on promoting health on campus in accordance with the 2015 Okanagan Charter. McMaster University implemented a Tobacco and Smoke-Free campus policy in 2018 and became the first 100% smoke-free campus in Ontario. The aim of this study was to evaluate and describe the impact of this policy.Methods: A cross-sectional community survey was conducted, a pre-post litter audit was performed, utilization of reduction and cessation services was tracked, and compliance data was analyzed. Descriptive statistics, Wilcoxon’s ranks sign test, paired samples t-test, and thematic analysis was performed with significance level at 0.05.Results: Over 1602 individuals responded to the survey. Most were aware of the policy prior to completing the survey (~93%). Respondents self-reported experiencing significantly less second-hand smoke on campus after the policy was implemented (p < 0.0001). Out of smokers, about half (52.2%) did not use tobacco or smoking products on university-owned property. There was an overall decrease in amount of litter from pre to post-policy implementation and an increase in the delivery and use of reduction and cessation services. Compliance data showed an increasing trend of security-related responses over the first four months, which is consistent with the overall gradual implementation of the policy.Conclusion: The results indicated that future policy implementation should focus on increasing communication and education regarding the policy, awareness and availability of reduction and cessation services, and making compliance more effective. This work is a useful resource for other post-secondary institutions considering similar policies.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.039 | 0.053 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.008 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.006 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.007 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.008 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".