title: Simulating demand for cigarettes among pregnant women: A Low-Risk method for studying vulnerable populations.
abstract: A substantive obstacle to experimentally studying cigarette smoking and use of other tobacco products in pregnant women is the risk of adverse effects on mother and fetus from experimenter administration of the product of interest. The purpose of this study is to investigate bypassing that obstacle by using behavioral economic simulation tasks. In the present study we used the Cigarette Purchase Task (CPT) to simulate changes in demand for hypothetical cigarettes as a function of varying cigarette prices. Participants were 95 pregnant women who completed the CPT prior to participation in a smoking-cessation trial. Aggregate and individual participant demand varied as an orderly function of price and those changes were well fitted by an exponential equation. Demand also varied in correspondence to two well-validated predictors of individual differences in smoking cessation among pregnant women (cigarettes smoked per day, pre-pregnancy quit attempts). Moreover, CPT indices were more effective than these two conventional variables in predicting individual differences in whether women made a quit attempt during the current pregnancy. Overall, these results represent a promising step in demonstrating the validity and utility of the CPT for experimentally examining demand for cigarettes, and potentially other tobacco and nicotine delivery products, among pregnant women.
authors.affiliation: Vermont Center on Behavior and Health.|Department of Psychiatry, University of vermont.|Department Of Psychological Science, University Of Vermont.
authors.forename: Stephen T
authors.initials: ST
authors.lastname: Higgins
authors.affiliation: Department of Applied Behavioral Science, University of Kansas.
authors.forename: Derek D
authors.initials: DD
authors.lastname: Reed
authors.affiliation: Behavior Analysis and Therapy Program, Rehabilitation Institute Southern Illinois University.
authors.forename: Ryan
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Redner
authors.affiliation: Department Of Medical Biostatistics, University of Vermont.
authors.forename: Joan M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Skelly
authors.affiliation: Vermont Center on Behavior and Health.|Department Of Psychological Science, University Of Vermont.
authors.forename: Ivori A
authors.initials: IA
authors.lastname: Zvorsky
authors.affiliation: Vermont Center on Behavior and Health.|Department of Psychiatry, University of vermont.
authors.forename: Allison N
authors.initials: AN
authors.lastname: Kurti
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D060909:Economics, Behavioral; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D011247:Pregnancy / Q000523:psychology; D011248:Pregnancy Complications; D012907:Smoking / Q000523:psychology*; D016540:Smoking Cessation / Q000523:psychology; D062789:Tobacco Products
keywords: Cigarette Purchase Task; behavioral economics; cigarette smoking; pregnant women; quit attempts; smoking rate; translational science