Measurements
The questionnaire collected data on demographics (age, gender, and income), pattern of smoking (age at initiation, whether ever tried to quit, nicotine dependence, and past 30-day consumption), the respondent’s perception that consumption is not high enough to be harmful, and the perception of harmfulness and addictiveness of cigarettes.For the next set of questions, we used a feature of SurveyMonkey to randomly assign participants to one of the five experimental conditions described below:Condition 1: Brand logos + Old text warnings (no pictorial warnings)Condition 2: Brand logos + Old text warnings with pictorial warningsCondition 3: Brand logos + New text and pictorial warningsCondition 4: No brand logos (PP, black background) + Old text and pictorial warningsCondition 5: No brand logos (PP, black background) + New text and pictorial warningsIn each condition, images of 14 cigarette packs, specially designed by our research team, were shown to the respondents. Students were asked to examine the images carefully. Each pack had one of the 14 text warnings (old or new) on it. The three most popular brands among youth (Winston, Marlboro, and Camel) were randomly distributed to these 14 packs [A sample of 7 (out of a total of 14) images of cigarette packs in the randomly assigned conditionsTo ensure that the participants were sufficiently exposed to the graphics and warnings, the images were placed on each page with the questions. There was no time limit for answering the questions; therefore, respondents could examine the images as they wished while answering the questions.