Determining if smokers who are able to successfully abstain from smoking on their initial quit selleck attempt are distinctly different from those who require more attempts is beyond the scope of this study but could be a focus of future research. In conclusion, three significant factors were found to be predictive of successfully completing a 24-hr quit attempt over the course of treatment. Furthermore, we found that those three predictors were not associated with long-term smoking abstinence, suggesting that different factors mediate the subprocesses of behavior change. If these results are replicated in future studies, treatments could be tailored early on to increase one��s ability to successfully initiate behavior change. Funding Funding for this study was provided by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (R01 DA017457).
Declaration of Interests None Declared.
Nicotine dependence is strongly correlated with persistent smoking, the leading contributor to preventable death in the United States (Centers for Disease Control, 2002). While the public health implications of nicotine dependence are clear (Mackay, Eriksen, & Shafey, 2006), the measurement of liability to nicotine dependence is actively debated (Hughes, 2006). Several diagnostic tools for the measurement of nicotine dependence exist��the most widely used are the Fagerstr?m Test for Nicotine Dependence (FTND; Heatherton, Kozlowski, Frecker, & Fagerstr?m, 1991) and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-IV; American Psychiatric Association, 1994) criteria for nicotine dependence.
The FTND consists of six items assessing aspects of smoking during the period of heaviest smoking, such as smoking when ill or smoking in places where it is prohibited. Two FTND items, time to first cigarette and cigarettes per day (CPD), comprise a subscale known as the Heaviness of Smoking Index (Heatherton, Kozlowski, Frecker, Rickert, & Robinson, 1989). The FTND was adapted from the Fagerstr?m Tolerance Questionnaire (Fagerstr?m, 1978) and has been shown to correlate highly with biochemical dependence. A score of 4 (from a scale ranging from 0 to 10) or greater on the FTND is considered to be indicative of nicotine dependence. Nicotine dependence is assessed using seven criteria in the DSM (version IV)��these criteria are generically applied across all drug classes (e.g., alcohol, cannabis) with some smoking-related specificity as needed (e.
g., chain smoking as an indicator of spending a great deal of time using the substance). The DSM-IV definition of nicotine dependence requires the endorsement of three or more of seven criteria clustering within a 12-month period. A conceptual challenge in the measurement of nicotine dependence is that FTND and DSM-IV nicotine dependence do not overlap to a significant Brefeldin_A extent��individuals with DSM-IV nicotine dependence do not uniformly meet criteria for FTND-based nicotine dependence or vice versa (Hughes et al., 2004).