Validity of Recall of Tobacco Use in Two Prospective Cohorts

Abstract

This project studied the convergent validity of current recall of tobacco-related health behaviors, compared with prospective self-report collected earlier at two sites. Cohorts were from the Oregon Research Institute at Eugene (N = 346, collected 19.5 years earlier) and the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (N = 294, collected 3.9 years earlier). Current recall was examined through computer-assisted interviews with the Lifetime Tobacco Use Questionnaire from 2005 through 2008. Convergent validity estimates demonstrated variability. Validity estimates of some tobacco use measures were significant for Oregon subjects (age at first cigarette, number of cigarettes/day, quit attempts yes/no and number of attempts, and abstinence symptoms at quitting; all P < 0.03). Validity estimates of Pittsburgh subjects’ self-reports of tobacco use and abstinence symptoms were significant (P < 0.001) for all tobacco use and abstinence symptoms and for responses to initial use of tobacco. These findings support the utility of collecting recalled self-report information for reconstructing salient lifetime health behaviors and underscore the need for careful interpretation.

Development and Reliability of the Lifetime Interview on Smoking Trajectories

“…The pattern of reliability documented here, highly consistent with findings based on the web-based LTUQ (Brigham et al, 2008(Brigham et al, , 2009(Brigham et al, , 2010, further delineates the relative salience of different smoking history variables to smokers and former smokers. For example, the age one progresses to daily smoking appears to be a highly salient benchmark, while smoking rate and minutes to first cigarette during that initial phase are less consistently recalled.…”

“…In the specific case of tobacco use, retrospective life history data are important for studies of the natural history of tobacco use and nicotine dependence (Brigham et al, 2010), the temporal patterning of tobacco use with co-occurring risk behaviors and morbidities over time (Bernstein, Zvolensky, Schmidt, & Sachs-Ericcson, 2007;Kahler et al, 2008), and research on the prevalence, contexts, and correlates of tobacco and other substance use disorders (cf., Degenhardt et al, 2008). Specific aspects of tobacco use history, such as age of onset and subjective reactions to early smoking experiences, have been studied as predictors of smoking severity and in identifying high-risk phenotypes (Johnson & Schultz, 2005).…”

“…Therefore, it is important to establish the reliability of smoking history indices collected retrospectively. The most pertinent research addressing these issues has been conducted by Brigham et al (Brigham et al, 2008, 2010, developers of the Lifetime Tobacco Use Questionnaire (LTUQ), a web-based retrospective assessment. Their first two studies evaluated test-retest reliability of self-administered web-based LTUQ variables across 2-year and 2-month intervals in adult samples of convenience, respectively (Brigham et al, 2008(Brigham et al, , 2009).…”

“…Their first two studies evaluated test-retest reliability of self-administered web-based LTUQ variables across 2-year and 2-month intervals in adult samples of convenience, respectively (Brigham et al, 2008(Brigham et al, , 2009). In the third study, smoking data collected in two separate prospective cohort studies were used to test the validity of retrospective LTUQ data collected 3.9 years later in one sample and 19.5 years later in the other (Brigham et al, 2010). Across studies, Brigham et al found that variables that were clearly defined and highly salient (i.e., their occurrence was sufficiently notable at the time) were reported with a higher degree of reliability than less salient variables.…”

Unplanned Quitting in a Triethnic Sample of U.S. Smokers

“…These include extreme response style and acquiescent response style (Davis, Resnicow, & Couper, 2011). In addition to response styles, there may be ethnic/racial differences in recall or reporting of tobacco use milestones that could result in misclassification of both quit type or days abstinent, which would limit the validity of our findings (Brigham et al, 2010). Prior studies of UQ used 6 months of abstinence as the criterion for success.…”