Predicting Smoking Prevalence in Japan Using Search Volumes in an Internet Search Engine: Infodemiology Study.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Tobacco smoking is an important public health issue and a core indicator of public health policy worldwide. However, global pandemics and natural disasters have prevented surveys from being conducted.

Objective

The purpose of this study was to predict smoking prevalence by prefecture and sex in Japan using Internet search trends.

Methods

This study used the infodemiology approach. The outcome variable was smoking prevalence by prefecture, obtained from national surveys. The predictor variables were the search volumes on Yahoo! Japan Search. We collected the search volumes for queries related to terms from the thesaurus of the Japanese medical article database Ichu-shi. Predictor variables were converted to per capita values and standardized as z scores. For

SUBMITTER: Taira K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9798260 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature