Reliability of the Fagerström Test for Nicotine Dependence, Minnesota Nicotine Withdrawal Scale, and Tiffany Questionnaire for Smoking Urges in Smokers with and without Schizophrenia

Abstract

Few studies have examined the psychometrics of smoking-related behavioral measures in schizophrenia and questions have been raised about the applicability to smokers with schizophrenia. We examined the reliability of the Fagerström Test for Nicotine Dependence (FTND), Minnesota Nicotine Withdrawal Scale (M-NWS), and the Tiffany Questionnaire for Smoking Urges (TQSU) for smokers with schizophrenia (SS; n = 151) and nonpsychiatric smokers (CS; n = 181) recruited into three studies with similar inclusion criteria. SS and CS did not differ on a number of demographic and smoking variables (e.g., age). SS reported higher carbon monoxide (CO) levels, plasma cotinine levels, FTND, M-NWS, and TQSU Factor 1 scores. The internal consistencies (Cronbach's α) of the smoking measures were found to be high and comparable between diagnostic groups for the FTND, M-NWS total scores, and TQSU Factor 2 (all α's > 0.70) but higher for the CS than SS for the TQSU Factor 1 (0.86 versus 0.79). Test–retest correlations were lower for SS than CS on the FTND (0.65 versus 0.82), TQSU Factor 1 (0.65 versus 0.79), and TQSU Factor 2 (0.69 versus 0.81), but did not differ between diagnostic groups for M-NWS (0.58 versus 0.64). Our findings suggest that these measures may be reliable for use in smokers with schizophrenia.