Consumer-Reported Outcome Measures (CROM) - Emilie Clerc

In tobacco harm reduction research, it is essential to understand people’s behaviors, intentions, and motivations concerning the initiation, continuation, or cessation of tobacco- and nicotine-containing products (TNP) to accurately assess their impact on population health. Consumer-reported outcome measures (CROM) are self-report tools used for assessing perceived states, reports of behavior, motivations, and comprehension of messages. To inform the evaluation of a growing range of tobacco and nicotine products, regulatory agencies have established rigorous standards for the type of scientific evidence required to demonstrate that a new tobacco product can benefit public health. In order to generate scientifically rigorous and robust data the assessment needs to be conducted using methods that are consistent across different companies. Therefore, harmonization and standardization of CROM, as well as reinforcing the criteria for their development and validation is important. To lead this effort, the CROM Task Force, established by CORESTA, aims to 1) develop best practices and guidelines for the integration of CROM in TNP research, and 2) create a knowledge repository for CROM to facilitate their identification and access by the scientific community. Through a consortium approach, experts from fields such as psychometrics, survey methodology, measurement science, public health, and regulatory science, developed two guidelines of best-practice and recommendations for the identification, selection, development and validation of CROM. The launch of a free, publicly available CROM repository helped streamline the use of CROM in tobacco and nicotine research, enabling easier comparisons between studies, aggregation of data, and harmonization of research outcomes. This initiative promotes international collaboration and brings together researchers from various disciplines in pursuit of a shared objective.