“A Preliminary Survey of Rhinotillexomania in an Adolescent Sample”, 2001-06-01 (; backlinks; similar):
Background: Rhinotillexomania is a recent term coined to describe compulsive nose picking. There is little world literature on nose-picking behavior in the general population.
Method: We studied nose-picking behavior in a sample of 200 adolescents from 4 urban schools.
Results: Almost the entire sample admitted to nose picking [193⁄200 = 96%], with a median frequency of 4 times per day; the frequency was >20 times per day in 7.6% of the sample. Nearly 17% of subjects considered that they had a serious nose-picking problem. Other somatic habits such as nail biting, scratching in a specific spot, or pulling out of hair were also common; 3 or more such behaviors were simultaneously present in 14.2% of the sample, only in males. Occasional nose bleeds complicating nose-picking occurred in 25% of subjects. Several interesting findings in specific categories of nose pickers were identified.
Conclusion: Nose picking is common in adolescents. It is often associated with other habitual behaviors. Nose picking may merit closer epidemiologic and nosological scrutiny.
…A need in this study was to identify and eliminate mischievous responses, such as might be expected from adolescent school children who are invited to complete a questionnaire on an offbeat subject. We used the question “Do you occasionally eat the nasal matter that you have picked?” to identify mischievous responses with the expectation that students who answer affirmatively to this question: are likely to respond mischievously to other questions as well. 9 subjects (4.5%) admitted to eating their nasal debris; however, these subjects did not differ from the rest of the group on any of the variables studied. This finding suggests that our expectation may have been wrong; that is, the responses of “eaters” may have been valid and not motivationally distorted. We therefore did not exclude these responses from the data set. The interesting conclusion is that, perhaps, a small percentage of nose pickers do, indeed, eat their nasal debris. In this context, it is worth observing that Tarachow18 reported that persons do eat nasal debris, and find it tasty, too.
…Subjects varied widely in their response to the question that sought their opinion on the percentage of nose pickers in the population; the mean was found to be 46.7%. Subjects’ opinions on the prevalence of nose picking showed no correlation with the frequency with which they themselves indulged in nose picking (r = 0.01, non-statistically-significant)…Interestingly, the frequency of nose-picking behavior (in an individual) did not correlate statistically-significantly with the perception of the commonness of the behavior in the population. This suggests the hypothesis that the frequency of nose picking is intrinsically driven, or at least that it is influenced by factors other than similar behavior in others.