The Autonomy Over Smoking Scale.

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.

Craving, Cue Reactivity, and Stimulus Control Among Early-Stage Young Smokers: Effects of Smoking Intensity and Gender

“…Dependence was measured via the Fagerström Test for Nicotine Dependence (FTND; Heatherton, Kozlowski, Frecker, & Fagerström, 1991) and the Autonomy over Smoking Scale (AUTOS; DiFranza, Wellman, Ursprung, & Sabiston, 2009). Subjective craving was assessed at the outset of the testing session (but after the smoked cigarette) and again pre-and postcue using the Questionnaire of Smoking Urges-Brief (QSU; Cox, Tiffany, & Christen, 2001;Davies, Willner, & Morgan, 2000).…”

The PROMIS(R) Smoking Initiative: Initial Validity Evidence for Six New Smoking Item Banks

“…The content of these banks is based primarily on the rich set of instruments currently available in the smoking research field (see Edelen et al, 2012) including, among others, the Fagerström Test for Nicotine Dependence (FTND; Heatherton, Kozlowski, Frecker, & Fagerström, 1991; more recently referred to as the Fagerström Test of Cigarette Dependence; Fagerström, 2012), the Nicotine Dependence Syndrome Scale (Shiffman, Waters, & Hickcox, 2004), the Wisconsin Inventory of Smoking Dependence Motives (WISDM; Piper et al, 2004), the Smoking Consequences Questionnaire (Brandon & Baker, 1991;Copeland, Brandon, & Quinn, 1995), the Smoking Effects Questionnaire (Rohsenow et al, 2003), the Perceived Risks and Benefits Questionnaire (McKee, O'Malley, Salovey, Krishnan-Sarin, & Mazure, 2005), the Coping with Temptations Inventory (Shiffman, 1988), the Reasons for Smoking Scale (Tate & Stanton, 1990), the Autonomy Over Smoking Scale (DiFranza, Wellman, Ursprung, & Sabiston, 2009), the Michigan Nicotine Reinforcement Questionnaire (Pomerleau et al, 2003), the Questionnaire on Smoking Urges (QSU; Tiffany & Drobes, 1991), the Smoking: Decisional Balance Long Form (Velicer et al, 1985), the Cigarette Dependence Scale, English-language version (Etter, Houezec, & Perneger, 2003), the Self-Efficacy/Temptations Scale-Long Form (Velicer et al, 1990), and the Transtheoretical Model Assessment (Prochaska, Velicer, DiClemente, & Fava, 1988). Initiating this assessment development process by compiling a set of items based on the "best of the best" and supplementing this content with direct input from smokers' own current experiences, we aspired to transport smoking assessment into the 21st century while maintaining a bridge back to the strong measurement legacy established in the smoking research field.…”

Affective Motives for Smoking Among Early Stage Smokers

“…The AUTOS (DiFranza, Wellman, Ursprung, & Sabiston, 2009) is a 12-item self-report measure of nicotine dependence that is a recent iteration of the Hooked on Nicotine Checklist (DiFranza et al, 2002). The AUTOS is thought to be distinct from smoking consumption and more sensitive to low rate smoking behavior than other dependence measures (DiFranza et al, 2007;MacPherson et al, 2008).…”