A Feasibility Study on Using an Internet-Panel Survey to Measure Perceptions of E-cigarettes in 3 Metropolitan Areas, 2015

Objectives:Internet-panel surveys are emerging as a means to quickly and cost-effectively collect health data, and because of their large memberships, they could be used for community-level surveys. To determine the feasibility of using an internet-panel survey to quickly provide community-level data, we conducted a pilot test of a health survey in 3 US metropolitan areas.Methods:We conducted internet-panel surveys in Cleveland, Ohio; New York, New York; and Seattle, Washington, in 2015. Slightly more than 500 people responded to the survey in each city. We compared weighted unadjusted prevalence estimates from the internet-panel data with estimates from the 2014 Health Information National Trends Survey (HINTS) for the following question in each survey: “Compared to smoking cigarettes, would you say that electronic cigarettes are…much less harmful, less harmful, just as harmful, more harmful, much more harmful, or I’ve never heard of electronic cigarettes.” We used multivariable logistic regression to co...