Developing a brief measure of smoking in the home: description and preliminary evaluation

We describe a self-report measure of household smoking exposure and its relationship to ambient nicotine levels as measured by a passive nicotine monitor. Thirty-nine participants placed a passive nicotine monitor in their home for a 7-day period and completed a retrospective household smoking questionnaire. The composite index from the household smoking questionnaire was strongly correlated with air nicotine concentration (r = .74, p < .01). The household smoking questionnaire appears to be a convenient low-response cost method of assessing indoor smoke exposure.