The development of a reinforcements inventory and its relation to smoking behavior

Abstract

Smoking is a form of easily observed behavior exhibited by a large percentage of the population. Beginning early in the present century, students of human behavior have reported a variety of behaviors associated with the act of smoking. A review of this literature suggested possible utility for developing an index of the relative influence of assorted events, objects and people on an individual's behavior. A 23-item self-rating scale similar in format to the Semantic Differential was developed (the Satisfactions Inventory, abbreviated SI) to test the hypothesis that smokers are influenced by different things than are nonsmokers. In addition, the literature suggested that several existing personality scales should have also been of some value in discriminating smokers and non-smokers. Because the SI was seen as a more direct and extensive measure of pertinent learned behavior associated with smoking, it was also hypothesized that the SI should have equal, or better, discriminative utility than the other measures. The primary data were collected from 115 high school sophomores taking a required Health course. In addition to the SI, the Social Desirability, Social Avoidance and Distress, Frequency-Response, Intellectual Academic Responsibility, Locus of Control, and two Alienation scales were used to assess each S. After a six week interval, 40 Ss were retested on the SI to provide some indication of its reliability. Earlier in the development of the SI, two other samples of high school and college Ss were given a preliminary form of the SI along with several of the other scales. A third auxiliary sample of college Ss were given the SI on a three-week test-retest basis. Step-wise discriminant analyses of the data supported both the hypotheses of different reinforcer hierarchies for smokers and non-smokers and of the discriminative efficacy for the SI over the more traditional personality scales. Single SI item scores, as well as several part scores based on simple unweighted sums, had significant utility in classifying smokers and non-smokers. Also, different SI items were useful in discriminating males from females. All but one of the smoker-non-smoker mean differences for the other personality scales were in the predicted direction but, as a battery of tests, could not succeed either grade point averages or the SI in their discriminative power. The reliability coefficients of the SI items taken singly and the various summary scores were significant for both the high school and college samples. The data from the three auxiliary samples tended to support the major hypotheses, although the college data were not as unequivocal. The present findings were discussed in terms of some recent learning analyses of what occurs when S fills out a typical personality inventory. The possible significance of the current results for some of the difficulties with existing smoking modification programs was discussed. Some of the present study's limitations were also indicated, along with suggestions for future applications of the SI.