JOURNAL OF AMERICAN COLLEGE HEALTH, VOL. 58, NO. 6 Construct Validity and Reliability of College Students’ Responses to the Reasons for Smoking Scale Kelly Ann Fiala, PhD, ATC; Michelle Lee D’Abundo, PhD, MSH; Laura Marie Marinaro, MSND, ATC Abstract. When utilizing self-assessments to determine motives for health behaviors, it is essential that the resulting data demon- strate sound psychometric properties. The purpose of this research was to assess the reliability and construct validity of college stu- dents’ responses to the Reasons for Smoking Scale (RFS). Con- firmatory factor analyses and internal consistency reliability coeffi- cients were completed. The data of 110 college students who smoke fell short of providing a good fit, χ 2 (130) = 343.856, root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) = 0.123, comparative fit index (CFI) = 0.793, Tucker-Lewis index (TLI) = 0.756. Reliabil- ity coefficients ranged from.615 to.912. Three subscales improved reliability by removing an item. Although the fit indices showed improvement with these modifications, good model fit was still not achieved, χ 2 (50) = 148.059, RMSEA = 0.134, CFI = 0.872, TLI = 0.831. Although other populations’ responses to the RFS have demonstrated validity and reliability, this college population’s did not. Health educators should use caution when interpreting the results of college students’ responses to the RFS because they may be incomplete and/or inaccurate. Keywords: cigarette use, tobacco use, survey, web-based survey, psychometric properties Background M Many colleges include a fitness/wellness course as part of their general education requirements. Like other college subjects, there are a number of text- books available to facilitate the instruction of these courses. One popular textbook choice is Fit and Well: Core Concepts Dr Fiala is with the Department of Health, Physical Education & Human Performance at Salisbury University, Salisbury, Mary- land. Dr D’Abundo is with the Department of Health and Applied Human Sciences at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington in Wilmington, North Carolina. Ms Marinaro is with Woodbridge High School in Bridgeville, Delaware. Copyright © 2010 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC and Labs in Physical Fitness and Wellness. 1 To help guide wellness curriculum, a number of these resources, includ- ing Fit and Well, expose students to self-assessment tools. These tools are designed to allow each student to reflect on and evaluate their behaviors and attitudes with regards to health-related issues. Many of the assessments come from highly reputable sources and have been psychometrically evaluated on various populations. Unfortunately, not all of them have been proven to be sound measurements for the typical college population and therefore the insight that they provide may be limited and/or inaccurate for this popula- tion. Results provided from the assessments may lead to a false sense of self-understanding in these students. In order to avoid these potential misunderstandings, it is important that the responses to these assessments be evaluated for va- lidity and reliability in the populations in which they are used. One of these self-assessment tools is the Reasons for Smoking Scale (RFS). This assessment was developed based on Silvan Tomkins’ affect management model for smoking. 2 According to Tomkins, individuals smoke for emotional mo- tives: either to enhance positive affect or to decrease nega- tive affect. He further hypothesized that reasons for smoking fall into 4 categories: smoking to increase positive emotion (smoking increases excitement), smoking to deal with nega- tive emotion (smoking acts as a sedative), addictive smoking (awareness of smoking for both positive and negative affect management), and habitual smoking (originally smoking for 1 of the 2 primary reasons but now smoking as a matter of routine). In 1966, shortly after the model was conceptualized, Horn and Waingrow developed a scale consisting of 23 questions intended to assess Tomkins’ 4 reasons for smoking. 3 When Ikard et al administered this scale to a population of adults who smoke, a factor analysis revealed 6 subscales. 4 These 571