Basic smoking status was assessed using the question, “Did you smoke in the past 12 months?” For each Wave, subjects were coded as to whether they are a current smoker (daily or non-daily smoking in the past 12 months) or non-smoker. A four-level variable was created to code whether participants were current smokers at Wave I (yes, no) and Wave II (yes, no). This variable was then recoded into four dummy variables “smoking persistence,” “smoking remission,” “smoking onset,” and “never smoker.”
