EXAMINING MOMENT TO MOMENT AFFECTIVE DETERMINANTS OF SMOKING RATE FOLLOWING A QUIT ATTEMPT IN A SAMPLE OF HOMELESS ADULT DAILY SMOKERS: AN ECOLOGICAL MOMENTARY ASSESSMENT STUDY

Tobacco use, mainly cigarette smoking, is a prevalent and deadly habit, and disproportionately affects homeless individuals, who have fewer resources and increased stressors compared to domiciled smokers. Despite these disadvantages, the majority of homeless smokers report a desire to quit yet little is known about how to facilitate smoking cessation among this population. Limitations of previous work includes small samples and low quit rates – even on the quit date. The current study used ecological momentary assessments (EMAs) and focused on cigarettes smoked per day (CPD) following a specific quit attempt to more effectively study smoking cessation among this group. Using the relapse prevention model to inform the hypotheses, the current study sought to examine whether moment-to-moment changes in affect [e.g., negative affect (NA), positive affect (PA), and stress] predicted changes in CPD following a specific quit attempt among a homeless sample of smokers. Participants were 67 homeless daily smokers aged >18 from a transitional shelter program in Dallas, Texas. Separate hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) on each predictor was performed to examine the associations between affective variables and CPD in covariate-adjusted analyses. Model diagnostics were run to test whether necessary model assumptions were met, then HLM was re-run on each predictor to obtain final results. Results indicated that increases in PA during the post-quit week significantly predicted fewer CPD (p=.0025). Increases in NA during the post-quit week was marginally associated with greater CPD (p=.0548). Homeless smokers may be less likely to increase their cigarette consumption during periods of greater positive affect throughout the post-quit week. Intervention programs could utilize this information as well as recent smoking cessation literature focusing on affective variables (using domiciled smoker samples) to examine the efficacy of a harm reduction approach to eventual cessation.