Objective: To examine the association between vaping and health behaviors (physical activity, fruit and vegetable consumption, sleep, cigarette use, alcohol consumption) and mental health among college students. Methods: Socio-demographic characteristics, vaping, health behaviors, perceived stress, and depressive symptoms of undergraduates…

Health misinformation is a problem on social media, and more understanding is needed about how users cognitively process it. In this study, participants' accuracy in determining whether 60 health claims were true (e.g., "Vaccines prevent disease outbreaks") or false (e.g., "Vaccines cause disease outbreaks") was assessed. The…

Objective: The current study tracked attitudinal and behavioral changes related to a campus-wide smoking ban. Participants: Students from 2 colleges in Massachusetts (N = 418; April 2014; N = 640 April 2018). Methods: Surveys tracked students' smoking habits, beliefs about smoking, and attitudes before and four years after the implementation of a…

Background: For years, tobacco risk communication has largely focused on cigarette smoking. New strategies must be developed to adapt to emerging tobacco products, such as waterpipe tobacco smoking (WTS). Aims: The purpose of this pilot study was to determine the preliminary effects of health information on waterpipe lounge menus on the…

Electronic cigarette use during middle school and high school has become an alarming public health concern. Educating youth about the risks of using e-cigarettes through a prevention program can be instrumental in curbing the growing numbers. Our Extension team implemented a prevention program, Escape Vapes, which adapted three Stanford University…

The purpose of this occasional paper is to compare point estimates and trends included in the Monitoring the Future (MTF) Panel Study annual report: "National Data on Substance Use among Adults Ages 19 to 60, 1976-2021" prepared using historical post-stratification weights, with the same point estimates and trends obtained when using MTF…

How people make perceived message effectiveness (PME) judgments remains mostly unexplored. This study assessed whether people need to spontaneously think about message effectiveness to report the message as effective on rating scales and investigated emotions as precursors to PME. After viewing one of four e-cigarette prevention messages, 1,968…

Policy drives community-level behavior change, so behavior analysts should aid empirical policy development. University campus regulation is a useful proxy for broader policy initiatives and thus is a convenient inroad for behavior analyst involvement. This paper examines behavior analytic contributions to the planning and evaluation of a…

Objectives: We aimed to document the social factors encouraging and discouraging e-cigarette use amongst Latino college students. Participants: Participants were second-generation Latino male college students. Methods: We interviewed 20 second-generation Latino male college students, 10 regular smokers and 10 infrequent smokers, at the University…

The effectiveness of e-cigarettes in smoking cessation is under debate. Informing smokers who are motivated to quit smoking about e-cigarettes may help them to make an informed decision about their use for smoking cessation, which, however, may also lead to unintended effects such as less quitting. This experimental study assessed the influence of…

This study aimed to assess the fertility knowledge of Japanese education undergraduates who plan to become schoolteachers and examine related factors. A cross-sectional questionnaire survey was conducted with 252 first-year education undergraduates at a Japanese university. The Cardiff Fertility Knowledge Scale (CFKS) was used to measure fertility…

Objective: To investigate the impact of generalized joint hypermobility (GJH) on eating behavior. Participants: Physical therapy and rehabilitation students. Methods: The Beighton evaluation (a cutoff of 5/9) for defining GJH. The Eating Attitudes Test (EAT-40) was used for eating disorders. Smoking habits and alcohol use were also questioned.…

A prospective online study, consisting of 203 participants ages 18 and older who smoked waterpipe (hookah) within the last 30 days, examined how brief messaging about harms of burning charcoal to heat waterpipe tobacco (shisha) influenced knowledge of toxicants released by using charcoal and perceived harms of using charcoal. Participants were…

Background: The prevalence of electronic-cigarette (e-cigarette) product placement in music videos is on the rise and currently unregulated. This promotional activity is concerning given the popularity of music videos among young adults. Aims: We examined associations between self-reported levels of exposure to music videos with any e-cigarette…

Objective: To examine whether policies prohibiting smoking on college campuses contribute to greater decreases in smoking. Participants: This study compares smoking prevalence and perceptions of prevalence pre/post a smoking ban enacted in 2015 by using repeated cross-sectional surveys administered at a university in 2011 (n = 1.548), 2013 (n =…