Predictors of Canadian legislators’ support for tobacco control policies
Introduction
The implementation of effective policies to reduce tobacco consumption and exposure to second hand smoke should be facilitated by knowledge of the antecedents of adoption of these policies (Davis, 1995). Because legislators are in the position to enact many of the policies that are needed to support a comprehensive tobacco control strategy, they are an important focus for research on policy adoption.
Reports of legislators’ support for tobacco control measures include studies of US state legislators in Missouri (Davis, Kern, Perry, Brownson, & Harmon, 1989), Wisconsin (Gifford & Brindley, 1994), Kentucky (Hahn, Toumey, Rayens, & McCoy, 1999), and in North Carolina, Texas and Vermont (Goldstein et al., 1997). Dutch members of Parliament have also systematically been surveyed on tobacco policy issues (Hendriks, Garretsen, & van de Goor, 1997). In Canada, we have reported on support for specific tobacco control measures among provincial and territorial legislators (de Guia et al., 1998).
Other studies have explored the determinants of legislators’ support for tobacco control. Moore et al. used secondary data sources to investigate the influences on US House and Senate members’ votes on tobacco control initiatives (Moore, Wolfe, Lindes, & Douglas, 1994). Their multivariate analysis indicated that being a Republican, representing a tobacco-producing state, and receiving more money from tobacco political action committees were associated with opposition to tobacco control initiatives. Using the Theory of Planned Behavior as a model, Flynn et al. examined data collected from state legislators in North Carolina, Texas and Vermont (Flynn et al., 1998). They found that state, political party, attitudes, and perceived norms were significantly associated with legislators’ voting intentions on cigarette tax increases. Glantz and Begay explored influences on California State legislators’ records on tobacco control issues (Glantz and Begay, 1994). Those receiving more money from tobacco political action committees, Republicans, and those rated by members of the Sacramento press corps as having lower integrity and intelligence were more likely to oppose tobacco control initiatives.
Some of the US analyses have been criticized for not including measures of ideology (Wright, 1998), and there are other constructs that have not been explicitly considered in previous research on the topic. These include personal characteristics, tobacco experiences, knowledge about tobacco, and the saliency of various interest groups. The exclusion of variables related to a dependent variable in a multivariate analysis can result in biased regression coefficients (Maddala, 1992). Further, considering a broader range of variables and constructs could provide additional strategic information on ways in which health advocates can work toward creating favorable conditions for the enactment of tobacco control policies.
The present study of Canadian legislators did include measures of political ideology, as well as a broad range of variables, and is unique in that all federal, provincial, and territorial legislators were eligible for the study. We assessed the relationship between Canadian legislators’ support for tobacco control and five groups of potentially important variables, as outlined in a recently proposed conceptual framework for studying legislator decision making (Cohen et al., 2000): (1) political factors; (2) personal characteristics; (3) experiences with tobacco; (4) knowledge of tobacco-related health effects; and (5) interest group saliency.
Section snippets
Sample and data collection
All Canadian federal (n=291), provincial (n=700) and territorial (n=41) legislators serving as of October 1996 were eligible to participate in structured, computer-assisted telephone interviews, conducted in English or French (Ashley et al., 1997; Northrup, 1997). Data collection spanned the period from July 1996 to June 1997. The survey instrument was based on questionnaires used previously with legislators and the general public. A draft questionnaire was reviewed by experts in tobacco
Results
The bivariate associations between the Tobacco Control Support Scale and the measures of political factors, personal characteristics, tobacco experiences, tobacco knowledge, and interest group saliency are reported in Table 1. New Democrats were more supportive of tobacco control policies than were members of all other parties combined (p<0.001). Members of the Progressive Conservative (p<0.001) and Reform (p=0.004) parties were less supportive of tobacco control than all other legislators
Discussion
Although conclusions from this study must be tempered by the cross-sectional nature of the data, the findings do suggest a number of practical implications for tobacco control initiatives and possibly for other public health interventions.
First, political party membership should not be ignored when enlisting the support of legislators for tobacco control measures. We found similarities between Canadian and US legislators (Glantz & Begay, 1994; Goldstein et al., 1997; Moore et al., 1994) in that
Acknowledgements
Support for the research reported in this paper consisted of grants from Health Canada's National Health Research and Development Program. Staff at the Institute for Social Research at York University in Toronto contacted and interviewed the legislators. Dianne Alexander assisted in collecting data from public sources. The authors also would like to express their appreciation to all of the legislators who participated in the study, and to the former legislators who assisted in questionnaire
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