BACKGROUND: Female smoking is perceived very negatively in East Asian countries such as South Korea, Japan, and China, as well as in Islamic countries. These countries' self-reported surveys (SRs) tend to produce results that underestimate the number of smokers, owing to the social desirability response bias. The present study seeks to assess South Korea, Europe, and the Americas, by comparing data from SRs with those from urinary @entity4874 samples. METHODS: Current smoking rates were calculated using the SRs and the urinary @entity4874 concentration (UCC) methods according to socioeconomic factors. In order to examine response accuracy regarding current smoking status in the SRs, @entity1 who both completed the SRs and acquired UCC results were subject to analyses of sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value ( @entity2286 ), negative predictive value (NPV), and difference ratio (DR) with respect to gender, age, region, economic level, household status, and the presence of @entity102 . RESULTS: Based on self-reports, the current smoking rate among @entity1 was 7.1% (official smoking rates), while that according to the UCC was 18.2%; the rates for @entity1 were 47.8% and 55.1%, respectively. The sensitivity of males was 0.8553, the specificity 0.9768, @entity2286 0.9783, NPV 0.8465, and the difference ratio (DR) was 1.143. The sensitivity for females was 0.3670, the specificity 0.9956, @entity2286 0.9486, NPV 0.8761, and the DR was 2.6. These results exhibit a very low response alignment rate compared to males. CONCLUSION: This study shows that the actual female smoking rate is significantly higher than that reported officially, but also that the gap is decreasing steadily. Females exhibited a higher rate of false responses, which resulted in an underestimation of the female smoking rate.

Does South Korea have hidden female smokers: discrepancies in smoking rates between self-reports and urinary XXXX level.

@entity1 :: ('9606', 'Species') :: ['participants', 'women', 'men'] @entity102 :: ('MESH:D002908', 'Disease') :: ['chronic disease'] @entity2286 :: ('12211', 'Species') :: ['PPV'] @entity4874 :: ('MESH:D003367', 'Chemical') :: ['cotinine']
@entity4874 :: (MESH:D003367,Chemical) :: ['cotinine']
