Online Interest for Electronic Cigarettes Using Google Trends in the UK: A Correlation Analysis

Area of Science:

• Digital Epidemiology
• Public Health Surveillance
• Internet Data Analytics

Background:

• Google Trends offers accessible, real-time insights into public interest.
• A data gap exists in UK e-cigarette prevalence statistics.

Purpose of the Study:

• Analyze UK Google Trends data (2012-2021) to understand e-cigarette terminology and usage.
• Correlate search trends with official data from Action on Smoking and Health.
• Evaluate Google Trends' sensitivity to events and its predictive capabilities for e-cigarette data.

Main Methods:

• Analysis of UK Google Trends data from 2012 to 2021.
• Utilized Locally Weighted Scatterplot Smoothing, Pruned Exact Linear Time Method, cross-correlation, and Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) algorithms.
• Assessed terminology popularity, temporal significance, search volume correlations, and predictive accuracy.

Main Results:

• 'Vape' emerged as the dominant e-cigarette term, showing a correlation coefficient > +0.9 with official consumption data (lag 0).
• ARIMA model predictions showed variability, with forecasted trends occasionally exceeding the 95% prediction interval.
• Observed correlations between search trends and official data suggest Google Trends may reflect population-based e-cigarette use.

Conclusions:

• Google Trends data may align with population-based prevalence of e-cigarette use.
• Shifts in search trends appear to coincide with policy changes.
• E-cigarette online interest predictions using Google Trends need further validation and should complement traditional data collection methods.