An examination of the relationship between perceptions that cigarette smoking increases the severity of COVID-19 and reduction in smoking during the COVID-19 pandemic: Findings from the 2021 ITC Korea Survey
Bibliographic record
Abstract
INTRODUCTION: This study examined whether Korean adults who smoked cigarettes during the COVID-19 pandemic decreased their smoking because of COVID-19, with a focus on whether perceptions of susceptibility and severity of COVID-19 disease were associated with reduced smoking. METHODS: Data came from 1506 Korean adults (aged ≥19 years) who exclusively smoked cigarettes (weekly) and participated in the 2021 International Tobacco Control (ITC) Korea Survey. Weighted analyses assessed pandemic-related changes in smoking and whether reductions in smoking were related to: 1) perceived susceptibility to contracting COVID-19; 2) perceiving that smoking increases the severity of COVID-19 disease; and 3) general worry about getting a smoking-related disease. RESULTS: Korean adults were significantly more likely to have reduced their smoking because of COVID-19 (18.9%) than increased their smoking (6.3%) (p<0.001); 74.8% made no changes to their smoking. Reducing smoking was associated with being very worried about contracting COVID-19 (adjusted odds ratio, AOR=4.25; 95% CI: 1.65-10.99) and believing that smoking increases COVID-19 severity (AOR=2.34; 95% CI: 1.19-4.61). General worry about getting smoking-related diseases was not associated with smoking reduction (p=0.53). We also found an interaction between perceived severity and worry about getting COVID-19; those who were very worried about getting COVID-19 and perceive smoking as increasing its severity, were more likely to reduce smoking (p=0.049). CONCLUSIONS: In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Korean adults who smoked were much more likely to reduce than increase their smoking, unlike in most countries where there was no net change. The higher smoking reduction rate in Korea may reflect successful and strong communication by the Korean government regarding the importance of reducing smoking during the pandemic, compared to the general future threat of health risks from smoking.
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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 | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
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".