Reward Value of Cigarette Smoking for Comparably Heavy Smoking Schizophrenic, Depressed, and Nonpatient Smokers

Objective: The study goal was to determine whether schizophrenic and depressed smokers perceive the reinforcement value of cigarette smoking differently from nonpsychiatric smokers who smoke as heavily. Method: The authors assessed the preferences for smoking cigarettes versus engaging in other pleasant activities, the perceived advantages and disadvantages of smoking, and the amount of reinforcement that would be needed to attain smoking abstinence among 26 schizophrenic, 26 depressed, and 26 nonpsychiatric heavy smokers. Results: Both schizophrenic and depressed participants chose smoking as their preferred activity more often than nonpsychiatric smokers, and they did not differ from each other. The patients also exceeded the comparison group in the benefits they ascribed to smoking and felt they would require more incentives to quit, but they attributed comparable drawbacks to smoking. Conclusions: Schizophrenic and depressed smokers recognize many drawbacks associated with smoking, but compared to nonpatients who smoke as heavily, they also perceive more benefits and find cigarettes more appealing than alternative rewards. The heightened reward value of smoking warrants attention in tailoring tobacco control interventions for schizophrenic and depressed smokers

Making Customer Satisfaction Pay: Connecting Survey Data to Financial Outcomes in the Hotel Industry

Russian language version included.Despite the conventional wisdom that measuring customer satisfaction makes good business sense, there is a small but growing point of view that such measurements provide little or no actionable information to drive business outcomes.1 In contrast to that view, as we explain here, it is our position that companies should never stop measuring customer satisfaction, and instead they should take the necessary steps to ensure that measures of customer satisfaction are designed to provide the full benefit possible from such research.2010_Pingitore_Making_customer_satisfaction.pdf: 440 downloads, before Aug. 1, 2020.0-2010_Pingitore_Making_customer_satisfaction.pdf: 941 downloads, before Aug. 1, 2020

Randomized controlled trial for behavioral smoking and weight control treatment: effect of concurrent versus sequential intervention

The authors compared simultaneous versus sequential approaches to multiple health behavior change in diet, exercise, and cigarette smoking. Female regular smokers (N = 315) randomized to 3 conditions received 16 weeks of behavioral smoking treatment, quit smoking at Week 5, and were followed for 9 months after quit date. Weight management was omitted for control and was added to the 1st 8 weeks for early diet (ED) and the final 8 weeks for late diet (LD). ED lacked lasting effect on weight gain, whereas LD initially lacked but gradually acquired a weight-suppression effect that stabilized (p = .004). Behavioral weight control did not undermine smoking cessation and, when initiated after the smoking quit date, slowed the rate of weight gain, supporting a sequential approach