Fagerstrom Test for Nicotine Dependence

The Fagerstrom Test for Nicotine Dependence was designed to provide an ordinal measure of nicotine dependence related to cigarette smoking. It contains six items that evaluate the quantity of cigarette consumption, the compulsion to use, and dependence. It is useful as a screen for nicotine dependence and as a severity rating that can be used for treatment planning and prognostic judgments. The brevity and easy scoring of the FTND make it an efficient way to obtain clinically meaningful information. It can also be incorporated into general health and lifestyle screening questionnaires in clinical and nonclinical settings. This instrument is a revision of the Fagerstrom Tolerance Questionnaire (FTQ). It takes 2 minutes or less to administer the FTND and 2 minutes or less to score it. The Modified Fagerstrom Tolerance Questionnaire (mFTQ; Prokhorov et al., 1998) is an adapted version of a scale originally designed to assess behavioral indicators of physical dependence on nicotine among adult smokers (FTQ). It includes a modified set of adult symptoms for adolescents to address graded levels of smoking behavior, avoidance of the physiological effects of nicotine deprivation, and perceived difficulty refraining when prevented from smoking. It has been shown to predict continued smoking, quantity and frequencey of tobacco use, and shorter periods of abstinence from smoking over time.