Moroccan version of the short Tobacco Craving Questionnaire (MTCQ-12).

Introduction: Craving is a key clinical dimension in the assessment and management of substance use disorders. It is also a recognized predictor of relapse in addictology. To date, no scale for measuring tobacco craving is available to Moroccan clinicians. This work proposes a cross-cultural validation of the Tobacco Craving Questionnaire (TCQ) in its short version.

Methods: This work consists of the creation of a translated version according to a rigorous methodology and the evaluation of its psychometric properties in a statistical study.

Results: The validation study was done on a sample of 130 smokers with a majority of men (95%). It showed a high acceptability and homogeneity with a Cronbach's alpha coefficient of 0.82. The four scale factors showed a high discriminant validity. Finally, the scale showed high reproducibility with an inter-observer stability of 0.95 and 0.94 between tests and retests.

Conclusion: The Moroccan version of the TCQ-12 scale shows good validity indices for measuring craving in Moroccan smokers and also shows that it measures independently the four clinical dimensions of the scale.