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The conceptual framework of the International Tobacco Control (ITC) Policy Evaluation Project

¹ Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
² Department of Health Behavior, Roswell Park Cancer Institute, Buffalo, New York, USA
³ Cancer Control Research Institute, The Cancer Council Victoria, Carlton, Victoria, Australia
⁴ Institute for Social Marketing and Centre for Tobacco Control Research, University of Stirling and the Open University, Stirling, UK
⁵ Department of Health Studies and Gerontology, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
⁶ Department of Statistics and Actuarial Sciences, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

Correspondence to:
Geoffrey T Fong
PhD, Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West, Waterloo, Ontario N2L 3G1, Canada; gfong{at}uwaterloo.ca

This paper describes the conceptual model that underlies the International Tobacco Control Policy Evaluation Project (ITC Project), whose mission is to measure the psychosocial and behavioural impact of key policies of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) among adult smokers, and in some countries, among adult non-smokers and among youth. The evaluation framework utilises multiple country controls, a longitudinal design, and a pre-specified, theory-driven conceptual model to test hypotheses about the anticipated effects of specific policies. The ITC Project consists of parallel prospective cohort surveys of representative samples of adult smokers currently in nine countries (inhabited by over 45% of the world’s smokers), with other countries being added in the future. Collectively, the ITC Surveys constitute the first-ever international cohort study of tobacco use. The conceptual model of the ITC Project draws on the psychosocial and health communication literature and assumes that tobacco control policies influence tobacco related behaviours through a causal chain of psychological events, with some variables more closely related to the policy itself (policy-specific variables) and other variables that are more downstream from the policy, which have been identified by health behaviour and social psychological theories as being important causal precursors of behaviour (psychosocial mediators). We discuss the objectives of the ITC Project and its potential for building the evidence base for the FCTC.

Abbreviations: ETS, environmental tobacco smoke; FCTC, Framework Convention on Tobacco Control; GYTS, Global Youth Tobacco Survey; ITC, International Tobacco Control, NIH, US National Institutes of Health; SES, socioeconomic status; TTURC, Transdisciplinary Tobacco Use Research Center

Keywords: tobacco control policy; policy evaluation; Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC); health behaviour theory

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