I found this graph extremely intriguing because it confronted my own personal biases. Through high school and definitely into college, the amount of people I know who vape is quite large. It was impossible to go to a part at college without seeing multiple people pull out a vape, with even more people clamoring around to have a “hit” of it. Based on my own limited observations, I would have personally estimated that around 50% of college students vape, if not more. But of course that is not the case. I only saw people who were going to parties, and that usually means these people are more likely to participate in riskier behavior like vaping or drug use. I didn’t mentally take into account the people who don’t go to parties and who don’t take part in these activities. But it is likely that the stats presented in this graph aren’t entirely accurate. How can you accurately measure how many college students vape when there are millions of college students at thousands of schools across the country? A very large sample size would be needed for this data to be accurate. Furthermore, the survey could’ve unintentionally reached a greater population of students who vape than don’t vape. Also, this data is older, when vaping was less popular; I am aware that vaping has exploded amongst younger people since then. This sample in general might not be the most representative sample possible. The sample also isn’t purely random, as some metric had to decide which students and young adults were getting the survey or not. All in all, it is likely that the true incidence of vaping amongst teens and college students is either higher or lower than this graphic would lead you to believe.
I found it really interesting how you pointed out that your own environment and perception of reality effected the way you predicted these results to be higher. Maybe the area you went to high school in or maybe Richmond has more vape users than other parts of the country, but we don’t know that because we only go to college here. Like you said, there are millions of college students and this would have to be a rather large sample size and big experiment to be as accurate as possible. I also think you’re right that vaping has increased in popularity since 2018.
I think another area in which this data could be skewed goes back to the discussion of the problem of people wanting to sound good when surveyed. This might be my own personal bias speaking, but I feel like some college students would not admit to vaping. Others would definitely not shy away from it, but some students probably still worry about their parents finding out or worry about how others will perceive them differently if they knew. I agree that that statistic does seem low and I think this could be another reason explaining why that is.
I found this statistic very interesting as well. I lived within a similar environment in high school, where I thought everyone was vaping, while it was only a small margin of people. But, the information in the statistic may also be skewed because people do not want to admit to vaping, leading to underreporting.
I think this is a really interesting point and the part about understanding what type of college students are engaging in this was insightful. Not every college kid vapes, but definitely a lot of them. the way the graph is presented is really interesting because it clearly defines and shows that there is a problem here. However, I do think the number they have is inaccurate, mostly because young adults/college students are more likely to lie about whether they vape, whether to a survey or to doctors, etc.
I think this is a really interesting graph to use, as it shows both the differences in vaping among college and non-college students and the jumps from 2017 to 2018. Specifically, I am curious about the jump in the percent of both college and non-college students who vaped from 2017 to 2018. I wonder if this jump is due, in part, both the social idea that “everyone vapes” and in part to the increase of advertisements for vaping directed toward college-age and younger individuals in the media.