Methodology of the Global Adult Tobacco Survey in China, 2010.

The Global Adult Tobacco Survey (GATS) is a component of Global Tobacco Surveillance System (GTSS) under auspices of the Bloomberg philanthropy and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. GATS is a household survey with a standard protocol and its goals are to measure tobacco use, to assess changes due to policy and to facilitate cross country comparison. China is the largest consumer and producer of tobacco in the world. China was selected as one of 14 countries of high burden of tobacco use, large population, and mostly low income, to conduct the GATS. It is essential to establish an effective monitoring, supervising and evaluation system in China to monitor tobacco use and obtain nationally representative periodic data on the key indicators of tobacco use among adolescents and adults. This is a responsibility clearly given by the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) to all parties, as well as an important component of the six most effective strategies for tobacco control (the MPOWER package) vigorously advocated by WHO. GATS China, started in 2009 and completed in 2010, serves as an important measurement of the Chinese tobacco control monitoring system. In this paper, we describe the design features, data collection methods, and analytic methods to help tobacco control experts and researchers to understand GATS features and to use GATS China data. QUESTIONNAIRE DEVELOPMENT