Tobacco Motives Inventory

This is a 15-item pencil and paper self-report measure that assesses motives for cigarette smoking. Response choices are on a 5-point Likert scale ("not at all true" to "very true"). Adolescents are asked to rate each potential motive for smoking with respect to how true they think it is. There are four subscales for the 15-item measure. These include Social Motives (4 items), Self-enhancement Motives (4 items), Boredom Relief Motives (2 items), and Affect Regulation Motives (5 items).

The Tobacco Motives Inventory can be combined with an Alcohol Motives Inventory to yield a 30-item Tobacco and Alcohol Motives Inventory (a shorter 18-item version is also available). Items for alcohol use motives are identical except for replacing the word "drinking" for "smoking" on each item. Psychometric data are available on the combined 30-item Tobacco and Alcohol Motives Inventory.

Subscales:
Social Motives (items 1-4)
Self-enhancement Motives (items 5-8)
Boredom Relief Motives (items 9-10)
Affect Regulation Motives (items 11-15)

Subscale scores are obtained by summing response points on each subscale item. Response points are as follows: (1) Not At All True, (2) A Little True, (3) Somewhat True, (4) Pretty True, (5) Very True. For example, five data points on affect regulation are summed to produce the scale score for this construct.

To score the 30-item Tobacco and Alcohol Motives Inventory, response points for the two parallel items on smoking and alcohol are added first (e.g., Smoking helps you forget about worries, Drinking helps you forget about worries); then these data points are summed within a subscale.

Factor analysis identified two factors; factor one contained all social motive items while the second factor included all other items. The second factor, titled coping motives, includes self-enhancement, boredom relief, and affect regulation motive items.

Internal Consistency, smoking items only:

• Social motives (9-item version): Cronbach's alpha: 0.41
  Coping motives (9-item version): Cronbach's alpha: 0.89

Internal Consistency, 30-item Tobacco and Alcohol Motives Inventory:

• Social motives: Cronbach's alpha: 0.88
  Coping motives: Cronbach's alpha: 0.94
  Self-enhancement: Cronbach's alpha: 0.88
  Boredom relief: Cronbach's alpha: 0.92
  Affect regulation: 0.93 to 0.95.

Subscale inter-correlations for the 30-item instrument range from 0.63 (self-enhancement - boredom relief) to 0.80 (social motives - self-enhancement).

Validity Data (Tobacco and Alcohol Motives Inventory):
Coping motives (smoking and alcohol) significantly associated with substance use level (r =0.59, 0.60).
Smokers scored higher on coping motives related to smoking and scored lower on coping motives related to drinking alcohol.