Experimentally Testing Legally Feasible Regulatory Options for Reducing the Impact of the Point-of-sale Retail Environment on Adolescent Tobacco Use
Phase: NA
Conditions: Tobacco Use
Sponsor: RAND

Testing Legally Feasible Options: Study 1 
NCT04259749 
August 16, 2023 
 

Study Protocol 
Study objective.   The overall objective of this research is to experimentally evaluate 
legally viable approaches to reducing the impact of the POS retail environment on 
adolescent risk of using four classes of tobacco products: cigarettes, e-cigarettes, 
smokeless tobacco, and LCCs.  Specifically, we propose to investigate the extent to which 
eliminating the sale of flavored (sweet) and menthol tobacco products reduces 
adolescents’ risk of future use of tobacco.   
 
Study design.  The experimental conditions that we will compare in this study are: 
menthol and flavored products present (status quo), flavored products banned, and 
flavored and menthol products banned. The studies will take place in the RAND 
StoreLab (RSL), a life-sized replica of a convenience store that was developed to 
experimentally evaluate how altering aspects of tobacco advertising at POS influences 
tobacco use.   
 
Methods.  The study was approved by the RAND Human Subjects Protection 
Committee. Young people were recruited from the community through standard 
advertising campaigns.  Interested individuals completed a telephone screening to 
determine eligibility.  Eligible individuals completed informed consent (or consent and 
assent if minors).  Participants completed a baseline questionnaire that assessed 
demographics, tobacco product cognitions, smoking and tobacco use, and convenience 
store shopping habits.  Participants were then randomized to one of the three 
experimental conditions.  They were provided with a $10 (fake) RSL gift card and asked 
to shop in the RSL for whatever they wanted, for as long as they wanted.  They were 
asked to purchase at least one item and check-out and pay for the item(s) as they would 
in any convenience store.  A confederate who was not involved in the consent or survey 
process served as the cashier. This cashier scanned the selected items for a total price, 
scanned the gift card, and bagged the items.  Although no participants attempted to 
purchase tobacco from the RSL in this study, any such attempts would have been met by 
the cashier with a request for age identification and the purchase attempt would have 
been declined (i.e., because no participants were > 21 years old).   After exiting the RSL, 
participants completed the dependent measures.  They then: underwent a graduated 
debriefing; were asked to guess the study’s purpose; and were told that they would be 
unable to retain the items they selected from the RSL.  Participants then viewed a short 
tobacco media literacy video and received printed smoking prevention materials. 
Finally, they received a $40 gift card as compensation. 
 
Statistical analysis plan 
First, we evaluated whether randomization distributed pre-shopping baseline 
characteristics evenly across the experimental conditions.  These univariable analyses 
used either t-tests or chi-squared tests to evaluate significance (depending on variable 
distribution).  Next, we used logistic regression to evaluate the relationship between the 
experimental conditions and post-RSL shopping susceptibility to using cigarettes 
(unflavored and menthol); ENDS (unflavored, flavored, and menthol); LCCs 
(unflavored, flavored, and menthol); and smokeless tobacco (unflavored, flavored, and 
menthol) (0 = not susceptible; 1 = susceptible).  Lifetime use of each product under 
investigation was included in appropriate model as a covariate (0 = no use; 1 = any 

lifetime use).  Finally, because both age (continuous) and education (0 = still in 
middle/high school; 1 = high school graduate or more) are related to tobacco use, these 
variables were also included as covariates.  Each experimental/regulatory condition 
(only tobacco- and menthol-flavors displayed and only tobacco-flavors displayed) was 
compared to the all tobacco-, menthol-, and sweet-flavors displayed condition 
(reference) using planned contrasts.