Tobacco Control Scale website: a new tool for tobacco control advocates and researchers

Abstract

Background The Tobacco Control Scale (TCS) was first published in 2006 to monitor the implementation of tobacco control policies at country-level in Europe and, since then, every three years a new report (2007, 2010, 2013 and 2016) has been published. Our objective was to develop a website to gather and structure the information included in the TCS reports, to provide friendly dynamic graphics for professionals and the public, as well as, to compile other documents and publications derived from the scale. Methods The original TCS reports were used to bring together all the information and tables included in order to be able to access to all the information from one site. The researchers systematically reviewed all published articles that include the TCS, as main dependent or independent variable and other materials (seminars, photos, etc.) related to the scale. The researchers also generated dynamic graphics for visitors to explore how their countries' scores fluctuate across years and compare with other European countries. The website has been adapted to mobile devices. Results The website (www.tobaccocontrolscale.org) was launched at the 7 th ECTOH in March 2017 in Portugal. It has had 1,556 visits (July 2017): 55.9% direct, 21% referral, 12.9% social (55.7% via Twitter) and 10.2% others; the 73% have been new and 27% returning visitors. By country, 19.7% visitors were from Germany, 8.4% from Switzerland, 8.4% from Spain and 8.2% from the UK. The 17.5% have accessed to the website using either a mobile phone or a tablet. Conclusions The website has been well received by the tobacco control community with almost 1,600 visits from all over the world; however, more diffusion has to be made to stimulate its use and reach a larger audience in the future that could probably extend the use of the scale for tobacco control purposes.