Fagerström Test: Measuring Nicotine Dependence

The six questions cover how soon after waking the first cigarette is smoked, whether it is hard to refrain in places where smoking is forbidden, which cigarette would be hardest to give up, how many cigarettes are smoked a day, whether more is smoked in the first hours after waking, and whether the person smokes when ill enough to be in bed. The time to first cigarette and daily cigarette count carry the most points.

Heatherton, Kozlowski, Frecker and Fagerström published it in 1991 as a revision of the older Fagerström Tolerance Questionnaire, dropping items that performed poorly. Those two heaviest items, time to first cigarette and cigarettes per day, carry most of its predictive value, and together they form the Heaviness of Smoking Index, a two question short form. In 2012 Fagerström proposed renaming the test the Fagerström Test for Cigarette Dependence, to reflect that it was built around cigarettes rather than nicotine in general.