Multidimensional smoker profiles and their prediction of smoking following a pharmacobehavioral intervention

Abstract

The objective of this observational study was to identify multidimensional smoker profiles to aid the development of future tailored treatments for different smoker subtypes. Based on findings in the literature, it was hypothesized that smokers reporting higher levels of novelty seeking/hyperactivity, depressivity, and nicotine dependence would evince greater odds of postintervention smoking than smokers reporting lower symptom levels across these dimensions. Adult regular smokers (N=165) in southwest Germany completed self-report questionnaires assessing psychological and smoking variables and received a pharmacobehavioral intervention. A k-means cluster analysis involving indicators of depressivity, novelty seeking/hyperactivity, and nicotine dependence confirmed the hypothesized smoker profiles. These clusters evinced robustness on cross-validation and predicted smoking on follow-up. Specifically, smokers with depressive, novelty-seeking/hyperactive, and higher dependence profiles evinced significantly greater odds of smoking on follow-up than smokers with low-scoring profiles.