2.2.3. Smoking Status

Smoking status was assessed using a single item from the Adult Stages of Change for Smoking questionnaire [33,34] which measured participants' stage of change for quitting smoking. Participants were asked to respond to the question, 'Do you currently smoke cigarettes?' The answer was treated as a dichotomous variable to maintain uniformity within our analysis. The two categories were recoded and defined by 'Yes' (currently smoke) and 'No' (never smoked or quit smoking).
