Nondaily Smoking Cessation Motivation for Young Adults: Scale Development and Validation.

Introduction: Nondaily smoking is a growing public health concern, particularly among young adults. Given the lack of existing measures for assessing factors associated with this smoking pattern, the present study aims to develop a measure of motivation to quit among young adult nondaily smokers. Specifically, we developed a scale assessing motivation for nondaily smoking cessation, and examined its reliability, factor structure, and concurrent validity.Methods: We administered an online survey to 2,000 students at six colleges in the Southeastern US, and 718 (35.9%) returned a completed survey. The current analyses focused on the 95 participants who reported nondaily smoking (i.e., smoking between 1 and 29 days of the past 30 days). In addition to the items created for scale development, measures included sociodemographics, other measures of motivation and confidence/self-efficacy, past smoking/quitting history, readiness to quit, and perceived harm.Results: The 13-item Nondaily Smoking Cessation Motivation Questionnaire (NSCM) had an average score of 56.95 (SD = 24.33) and high internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha of 0.94). Factor analysis using principal components extraction with varimax rotation extracted three factors accounting for 76.8% of the variance: Controlled motivation, Autonomous motivation, and Amotivation. Concurrent and discriminant validity were documented.Conclusions: This study provided information about the development and validation of the Nondaily Smoking Cessation Motivation Questionnaire for young adult nondaily smokers. Given the lack of validated measures to assess factors associated with nondaily smoking, this assessment may be critical in informing our intervention strategies and potentially for predicting cessation among nondaily smokers in the young adult population. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]