A new measure of smoking initiation and progression among adolescents.
OBJECTIVE
To develop a new measure of smoking initiation and progression among adolescents.


METHODS
This study used data from 2504 regular and alternative high school students to evaluate the psychometric properties of a new 3-item, 5-stage measure of smoking initiation and progression.


RESULTS
The categorization method showed good 4-week test-retest reliability (.83 among boys and .87 among girls). The demographic distribution of adolescents into stages was consistent with previous research.


CONCLUSIONS
This 5-stage classification method could be a useful framework for describing variation along the smoking up-take and progression continuum.
Sun
Ping
P
Institute for Health Promotion & Disease Prevention Research, and Department of Preventive Medicine, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, Alhambra 91803, USA. sping@usc.edu
Unger
Jennifer B
JB
Sussman
Steve
S
D000293:Adolescent; D000294:Adolescent Behavior / Q000523:psychology*; D017668:Age of Onset; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D015994:Incidence; D008297:Male; D008403:Mass Screening / Q000379:methods*; D015995:Prevalence; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D017678:Sex Distribution; D012907:Smoking / Q000453:epidemiology*; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014029:Tobacco Use Disorder / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000453:epidemiology*