Evaluation of psychometric properties for translated-Malay version of the Brief Questionnaire on Smoking Urges

Purpose: Craving for smoking is often considered as an important concept in smoking addiction and the most prominent and bothersome symptom experienced during the abstinence attempt. This study tries to evaluate the Malay version of the Brief Questionnaire on Smoking Urges (QSU-Brief).

Methods: A cross-sectional study design was adopted for the conduct of the study. The reliability and valid­ity of Malay version for the questionnaire was evaluated based on the data collected from 133 participants. Cronbach’s alpha coeffi­cient was calculated to assess the reliability. In order to assess the validity of the scales, Factor analysis and concurrent validity was employed to validate the psychometric properties of the scales.

Results: The Malay version of QSU-Brief scale has good reliability with Cronbach’s alpha of 0.82. The test-retest reliability for the scale were presented an acceptable reliability and stability of the translated scale with spearman’s rank correlation coefficient with r = 0.757 (P < 0.001). Furthermore, There was a significant positive correlation between carbon monoxide level, FTND total score and number of cigarettes smoked per day with MNWS total score (r = 0.63, r = 0.58 and r = 0.62, P < 0.001; respectively). Surprisingly, principal components analysis with orthogonal rotation yielded a uni-deminsional model which includes all the items of QSU-Brief.

Conclusion: the findings from the current validation study revealed that the Malay version of the QSU-Brief are reliable and valid measure for the smoking urges and ready for use in clinical practice and research study.