At least some of these approaches appear to have been effective in generating calls by M��ori (Wilson, Grigg, Graham, & Cameron, 2005). Also a national survey (Ministry of Health, 2009a) reported that there 17-DMAG fda were no significant differences ��by gender, age group, ethnic group, or neighborhood deprivation�� among smokers who used the Quitline for their last quit attempt. However, an analysis of the Quitline caller database found relatively higher call levels by females and reported that 22% of callers in 2005 were M��ori and 4% were Pacific people (Li & Grigg, 2007), which are actually underrepresentative of these populations given their smoking prevalence (45% and 31%, respectively; Ministry of Health, 2009b).
In this study, we aimed to describe use of the national Quitline service in NZ and the variation in its use by smoker characteristics (particularly ethnicity and deprivation). Methods The ITC Project The International Tobacco Control Policy Evaluation Survey (ITC Project) involves multicountry cohort studies on tobacco use and policy evaluation (Fong et al., 2006). The NZ arm of the ITC Project survey derives its sample from New Zealand Health Survey (NZHS) participants. NZHS respondents were selected by a complex sample design, which included systematic boosted sampling of the M��ori, Pacific, and Asian populations. Interviews were conducted face to face in respondents�� homes by trained interviewers (on contract to the Ministry of Health) and resulted in a total of 11,924 interviews with respondents aged 18 years and over. The overall response rate was 67.9%.
Other issues around the NZHS response rate as it relates to the ITC project are detailed in an online Methods Report (Wilson, 2009). Participants The NZHS sample provided a sample of 2,438 adult smokers who were 18+ years and indicated they were willing to participate in further (unspecified) health research when invited at the end of the NZHS interview (85.2% of those eligible). Out of these potential respondents, a total of 1,376 completed a telephone questionnaire giving a response rate of 56.4%. But when considering the NZHS response rate and willingness to further participate, then the overall response rate is reduced further to 32.6% (for details, see Wilson, 2009). Between-wave attrition of 32.9% occurred, resulting in 923 respondents in Wave 2. Procedures Data collection was carried out using a computer-assisted telephone survey between March 2007 Carfilzomib and February 2008, 3�C4 months after their NZHS interview. Wave 2 was conducted between March 2008 and February 2009.