Investigating the factor structure of the Questionnaire on Smoking Urges-Brief (QSU-Brief)

This study was designed to investigate the proposed two-factor structure of the 10-item Questionnaire on Smoking Urges-Brief (QSU-Brief) and to provide evidence for the psychometric properties of this questionnaire using the seven-point scoring set from the original QSU study [Tiffany, S.T., Drobes, D.J. (1991). The development and initial validation of a questionnaire on smoking urges. British Journal of Addiction, 86, 1467-1476.]. The study sample (N=576) was comprised of smokers presenting for treatment. Although an initial exploratory factor analysis appeared to replicate the original factor analytic findings of Cox et al. [Cox, L.S., Tiffany, S.T., Christen, A.G. (2001). Evaluation of the brief questionnaire of smoking urges (QSU-Brief) in laboratory and clinical settings. Nicotine and Tobacco Research, 3, 7-16.], when subjected to confirmatory factor analyses, a five-item, two-factor model using the most robust items from the original QSU-Brief factor analysis was the best explanation of the data in the present study. Good internal consistency reliability estimates were also obtained with this model. These results suggest that this shortened form of the QSU-Brief can be used with the original seven-point scoring set as a reliable assessment of the dual nature of smoking urges in a treatment-seeking population.