Development and Validation of the Questionnaire of Vaping Craving

Introduction:
This text presents the development and validation of a questionnaire to measure vaping craving, a critical aspect of e-cigarette use and dependence. The study employed a two-step process, with Study 1 using exploratory factor analyses to identify items capturing a general craving factor, and Study 2 evaluating the psychometrics and validity of the questionnaire.

Key Points:

* The study used Amazon's Mechanical Turk to recruit e-cigarette users and validate the questionnaire.
* Study 1 identified a 10-item set from the Questionnaire on Smoking Urges (QSU) and the Cocaine Craving Questionnaire (CCQ), adjusted for e-cigarettes, that captured the general craving factor.
* Study 2 confirmed the questionnaire's factor structure, reliability, and convergent and discriminant validity.
* Higher vaping craving was significantly associated with the level of e-cigarette use, greater negative mood, and lower confidence in ability to quit vaping.
* Among participants who also smoked tobacco, vaping craving was more strongly associated with e-cigarette dependence than tobacco dependence.
* The questionnaire, named the Questionnaire of Vaping Craving (QVC), demonstrated high reliability and clear convergent and discriminant validity.

Main Message:
The study successfully developed and validated the QVC, a psychometrically sound measure of vaping craving. This tool can be used in laboratory and clinical settings to better understand the nature of vaping craving, advance current tobacco cessation strategies, and improve users' ability to cope with craving. The QVC's brevity and direct testing in a short form make it an easily applicable assessment for both research and clinical contexts. However, the study's limitations, such as the reliance on an online labor market and the lack of assessment of e-cigarette generation types, should be taken into account when interpreting the results.

Dowd, Ashley N, Courtney A Motschman, and Stephen T Tiffany. “Development and Validation of the Questionnaire of Vaping Craving.” Nicotine & Tobacco Research 21, no. 1 (January 1, 2019): 63–70. https://doi.org/10.1093/ntr/nty046.