An innovative questionnaire examining psychological nicotine dependence, "The Kano Test for Social Nicotine Dependence (KTSND)"

A smoking habit is maintained by psychological and physical nicotine dependence. We thought up a new concept, "social nicotine dependence", which is a part of psychological dependence, and developed a new questionnaire, "The Kano Test for Social Nicotine Dependence (KTSND)" version 2. The KTSND has ten questions with a total score of 30. In order to investigate the validity of the KTSND, we applied it to the employees of 10 pharmaceutical companies and collected 344 respondents. The total KTSND scores of 18.4 ± 5.2 (mean ± SD, n = 105) for smokers were significantly higher than those of 14.2 ± 6.1 (n = 88) for ex-smokers, and 12.1 ± 5.6 (n = 151) for non-smokers. Each question produced significantly different scores among these groups. Smokers were subclassified by factors of physical nicotine dependence, namely, "number of cigarettes smoked per day" and "time until the first cigarette of the day". The total scores did not reflect these physical factors. On the other hand, the total KTSND scores reflected one of the psychological nicotine dependence factors, namely, "the stages for quitting smoking". The KTSND scores were significantly different among 4 groups: 22.4 ± 6.3 for immotives, 19.0 ± 3.9 for precontemplators, 16.1 ± 3.8 for contemplators and 14.5 ± 5.9 for preparers. These results showed that the KTSND reflected the smoking status and the stages for quitting smoking. We consider that the KTSND is a useful method to evaluate psychological aspects of smoking.