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Recent studies of smoking prevention have utilized procedures designed to motivate adolescents to provide truthful self-reports by convincing them that their smoking status can be verified by an independent (“bogus”) measure. The current study evaluated the effectiveness of three “bogus-pipeline” procedures hypothesized to increase the validity of self-reported cigarette smoking among 646 seventh graders from two suburban New York City schools. A second aim was to determine the extent to which “bogus-pipeline” procedures targeted specifically at cigarette smoking can indirectly increase the validity of self-reports of alcohol and marijuana use. Over-all, the observed bogus-pipeline effects were modest. Of the three procedures, both the video tape and cartoon presentation modes resulted in a slightly higher percentage of self-reported smoking behavior; only the cartoon presentation mode resulted in a higher percentage of drinking behavior. A reverse effect was observed for self-reported marijuana use in which subjects in the non-bogus-pipeline (control) condition reported significantly more marijuana use than those in the three bogus-pipeline conditions, suggesting overreporting in this population. It appears the validity of adolescents' self-reports may vary from population to population and from behavior to behavior in relation to the perceived social desirability of the specific behavior measured.

In a study designed to assess the relationship between smoking status and correct identification of cigarette brands, junior high school students from two schools viewed cigarette and automobile advertisements with brand and model identification deleted. Results showed that adolescents with higher ad recognition scores were more likely to smoke cigarettes. In addition, a relationship was found between age and correct identification of cigarette advertisements, with older students identifying more ads correctly than younger students. No significant effects emerged for identification of automobile advertisements except for sex, with boys identifying more advertisements than girls. Additional findings indicated that even “experimental” smokers, who smoked as little as once per year, recognized significantly more cigarette advertisements than nonsmokers. These and other results are discussed in terms of their implications for prevention and policy issues. It is argued that society's allowance of printed cigarette advertising overlooks adolescents' heightened vulnerability to the kinds of appeals used in cigarette advertisements. Present policy also overlooks adolescents' relative unresponsiveness to the health risk information required in cigarette advertisements.