Agreement between Smoking Self-report and Urine Cotinine among Adolescents.

OBJECTIVE: Cotinine, the major metabolite of nicotine, is a useful marker of exposure to tobacco smoke and self-reporting of smoking status is thought not to be reliable. This study aimed to evaluate the agreement between the smoking self-report among adolescents and the urinary cotinine test. METHODS: The study subjects were 1226 middle and high school students in Hanam city, who were selected by stratified random sampling. The self-report about smoking behavior was compared with urine cotinine value measured with PBM AccuSignRfi Nicotine (Princeton BioMeditech Corporation, USA). The percentage agreement, kappa and 95% confidence interval (CI) were calculated. RESULTS: The overall percentage agreement was 88.6%, and those for boys, girls, middle school, general school and vocational school students were 87.3%, 90.1%, 93.7%, 85, 5%, 90.7%, and 78.4%, respectively. The overall kappa index was 0.46 (95% CI=0.39-0.54) for overall, and those for boys, girls, middle school, general school and vocational school students were 0.56 (95% CI=0.48-0.65), 0.20 (95% CI=0.07-0.32), 0.21 (95% CI=0.09-0.34), 0.55 (95% CI=0.47-0.64), 0.42 (95% CI=0.33-0.52), and 0.48 (95% CI=0.36-0.60), respectively. CONCLUSIONS: The percentage agreement was relatively high but the kappa values very low for girls, and middle school students. Though the prevalence bias can be influenced by these results, the selfreport was not a sufficient tool for the evaluation of adolescents' smoking status, especially in girls or middle school students.

Evaluation of field epidemiology specialist training program based on the satisfaction and the changes of educational needs.

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the learning achievement and satisfaction levels for the Field Epidemiology Specialist Training Program (FESTP), on infectious disease control between March 19 and October 31, 2002. METHODS: The FESTP was designed as a set of 84 hours curricula including lectures, discussions, self-studies, and field practicals, and organized both centrally and locally by the Division of Communicable Disease Control of the National Institute of Health and 11 universities. Before and after the program, a questionnaire survey on the educational need (49 items) and satisfaction (15 items) was conducted on 484 trainees, who were responsible for communicable disease control and immunization at 242 regional health centers. The data were analyzed with paired t-tests for comparison of the educational needs between the pre and post scores. RESULTS: The average score for satisfaction was 3.06 out of 5.0; with relatively higher scores for sincerity (4.10) and professionalism (4.01) of the tutors, adequacy (3.54) and clearness (3.51) of the evaluation criteria, usefulness (3.54) and fitness (3.52) of the contents, but with relatively lower satisfaction for schedule (2.96) and self-studies (2.91). The average for requirement for education improved, as shown by the decrease from 2.72 to 2.22 (p< .0001) with the biggest decrease in the outbreak investigation from 2.60 to 2.08. CONCLUSIONS: The FESTP was evaluated as being effective, the trainees showed moderate satisfaction and decrease educational needs. However, the actual schedules and self-studies should be rearranged to improve the satisfaction level.