Public support for smoke-free private indoor and public outdoor areas in the Netherlands: a trend analysis from 2018-2022 215 5 Participant characteristics Participants were categorised according to: gender (male or female), age in years (18-34, 35-54, or 55+), smoking status (non-smoker, ex-smoker, or current smoker) and socioeconomic status (SES; low, medium or high). SES was based on a combination of the participant’s education and occupation (Appendix I), where occupation consists of categories of job sector and management positions. Questionnaire The surveys were conducted within two weeks in February 2020, 2021 and 2022, and between March and April 2018 and 2019. Participants were asked to answer, among other questions, twenty-two questions on support for smoke-free policies in several areas, which we categorized as follows: private cars with children, outdoor areas frequented by children (i.e. outdoor sports fields for children, petting farms, playgrounds, scouting areas, theme parks, and zoos), outdoor areas surrounding child care or educational facilities (i.e. 5–10 m surrounding day care entrances, primary school grounds, secondary school grounds, and grounds of vocational education institutions, and of universities or universities of applied sciences), outdoor leisure areas (i.e. outdoor drinking and eating areas, beaches, soccer stadiums, outdoor swimming pools, parks, and outdoor sports fields), and areas surrounding buildings/public transport stops (i.e. in and around city halls, hospital grounds, and train station platforms). Before 2018, support was assessed using the following question: ‘To what extent do you agree or disagree with a legal smoking ban in the following places? Completely agree, agree, neither agree nor disagree, disagree, completely disagree, don’t know.’. In 2018 and 2019, a pilot conducted by Kantar Public framed several questions, both supporting a smoking ban as well as a smoke-free zone in the same area. No significant differences were found between support for a ban and support for a smoke-free zone; therefore, positively framed questions were used when available in 2018 and 2019. From 2020 onwards, all questions were framed positively using the question: ‘Which of the following places should be completely smoke-free?’. In 2022, questions regarding outdoor educational facilities changed from ‘outdoor educational facilities’ to ‘outdoor and surrounding areas of educational facilities’. As this affects the comparability of the question to previous years, 2022 was not included for educational facilities.
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