Examination of a brief smoking consequences questionnaire for college students

This study examined the factor structure of a brief version of the Smoking Consequences Questionnaire-Adult (SCQ-A) among 315 college freshman and sophomore smokers. A comparison of results from two confirmatory factor analyses demonstrated that a nine-factor model provided superior fit to a four-factor model. Furthermore, results revealed a lack of factorial invariance of factor loadings for daily and nondaily smokers, and of latent mean structures for smoking category and gender. In addition, concurrent validity tests demonstrated that positive expectancies increased with smoking rate and nicotine dependence. These results and their implications are discussed.