Title

The Autonomy Over Smoking Scale

UMMS Affiliation

Department of Family Medicine and Community Health

Publication Date

2009-12

Document Type

Article

Subjects

Adolescent; Adult; Behavior, Addictive; Chi-Square Distribution; Female; Humans; Male; *Personal Autonomy; *Psychiatric Status Rating Scales; Questionnaires; Smoking; Smoking Cessation; Tobacco Use Disorder

Disciplines

Community Health | Preventive Medicine

Abstract

Our goal was to create an instrument that can be used to study how smokers lose autonomy over smoking and regain it after quitting. The Autonomy Over Smoking Scale was produced through a process involving item generation, focus-group evaluation, testing in adults to winnow items, field testing with adults and adolescents, and head-to-head comparisons with other measures. The final 12-item scale shows excellent reliability (alphas = .91-.97), with a one-factor solution explaining 59% of the variance in adults and 61%-74% of the variance in adolescents. Concurrent validity was supported by associations with age of smoking initiation, lifetime use, smoking frequency, daily cigarette consumption, history of failed cessation, Hooked on Nicotine Checklist scores, and Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder (4th ed., text rev.; American Psychiatric Association, 2000) nicotine dependence criteria. Potentially useful features of this new instrument include (a) it assesses tobacco withdrawal, cue-induced craving, and psychological dependence on cigarettes; (b) it measures symptom intensity; and (c) it asks about current symptoms only, so it could be administered to quitting smokers to track the resolution of symptoms.

DOI of Published Version

10.1037/a0017439

Source

Psychol Addict Behav. 2009 Dec;23(4):656-65. Link to article on publisher's site

Journal/Book/Conference Title

Psychology of addictive behaviors : journal of the Society of Psychologists in Addictive Behaviors

Related Resources

Link to Article in PubMed

PubMed ID

20025371

Link to Full Text

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