A comparison of four international surveys of tobacco dependence treatment provision: implications for monitoring the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control

Aims: Article 14 of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) requires countries to implement systems to provide tobacco dependence treatment. We report on global efforts to monitor the implementation of Article 14, and compare the surveys used in this effort.

Design: Cross-sectional comparison of agreement (concordance and discordance) among the four main surveys used to monitor tobacco dependence treatment provision.

Setting: Four global surveys of tobacco treatment provision.

Participants: The four surveys were Raw et al. (2009), the Framework Convention Alliance (FCA) Monitor, World Health Organization (WHO) MPOWER survey and the FCTC Party Reports.

Measurements: Concordance as measured by percentage providing the same answers, as well as kappa statistic of inter-rater agreement.

Findings: The four surveys used to monitor Article 14 implementation vary widely in countries sampled, questions asked, respondent characteristics and survey design. The four surveys generally show a moderate to high concordance (kappa > 0.60) with each other across most survey pairs and most domains, except for the MPOWER and FCTC Party governmental surveys (63% overall concordance, kappa =0.26). This concordance was lower than any other survey pair examined. Government respondents to the WHO MPOWER and FCTC Party Report surveys provided answers to the same question domains with relatively poorer concordance than those from surveys of non-governmental or mixed governmental/non-governmental sources.

Conclusions: Current surveys of tobacco dependence treatment provision are in general agreement with each other except for the two official government surveys that rely on governmental respondents. We believe that this points to the continued need for independent non-governmental monitoring of FCTC protocol implementation.