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Putting a Statistical Model in Context: Making Sense of Unexpected Evaluation Findings in the Absence of Formal Research 

11-03-2015 13:38

Poster for AEA 2015 We modeled cigarette sales in Wyoming from May 1996 through May 2014, accounting for state and federal excise taxes. Our model showed a good fit for data until fall of 2012. After that point, the model predicts higher cigarette sales than the actual data. We found that the state-level sales data mirrored a downturn in national cigarette sales data (Orzechowski & Walker, 2014). We hypothesized that the Tips from Former Smokers campaign may have been a contributing factor. However, we were not satisfied that Tips and the published literature provided a strong explanation for the change in cigarette consumption, so we considered additional explanations. We attribute most of the sales decline to : the growing popularity of e-cigarettes, a hot topic in tobacco prevention with little published research. The results of this evaluation work demonstrate the need to monitor gray literature to account for surprises in our work and provide accurate explanations of our data.

#Tobacco

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Putting a Statistical Model in Context Poster   366 KB   1 version
Uploaded - 11-03-2015
Analysis of cigarette consumption revealed e-cigarettes to a plausible factor in a recent decline.
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Putting a Statistical Model in Context Handout   468 KB   1 version
Uploaded - 11-03-2015
Handout for poster of the same name, including full references list.