# MMC

> **NIH NIH U54** · UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA · 2023 · $293,830

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY: MEASURES AND MATERIALS CORE (MMC)
The tobacco product market and policy landscape evolve quickly, necessitating rapid development of accurate
assessments and materials for tobacco regulatory science. Thus, there is a need for flexibility to ensure that
measures and product materials used in survey and experimental research maintain their timeliness, accuracy,
and relevance. Additionally, the US population is diverse across several demographic characteristics, and some
populations are disproportionately impacted by tobacco use and targeted marketing practices, necessitating
survey and experimental research to develop and use culturally appropriate measures. Thus, many subfields
within tobacco regulatory science have an ongoing need for their measures and materials to be regularly adapted
to keep pace with these rapid changes in the tobacco market and regulatory landscape, and to provide data
relevant to diverse populations. To meet this need, the Measures and Materials Core (MMC) will use creative
and rigorous methodologies to rapidly develop, refine, validate, and characterize assessments and materials for
internal use by USC TCORS projects and for outward dissemination to the national network of tobacco regulatory
scientists. The MMC will collect information from key sources to ensure USC TCORS stays abreast of
developments in the tobacco market and policy landscape and addresses the needs of diverse populations. The
MMC will also work with TCORS project investigators to execute measure and materials development,
refinement, and validation designed to impact their projects. This includes a priori development survey
assessment and psychometric testing (with Data Processing and Analysis Core [DPAC] analytic assistance) for
projects 1-3 and creating experimental stimuli that are realistic and representative of the market for Projects 2
and 4. MMC will also coordinate flavoring constituent analysis of concept flavor products identified in the research
projects (Projects 1 and 2) to triangulate self-reports of the sensory attributes about these flavors (e.g., fruity)
and the flavoring chemicals detected in them. The MMC has three aims: (1) To collect information about changes
in the tobacco market and policies, and how different populations are impacted, to identify needs for measure
and material adaptations; (2) To develop, refine, and validate measures and materials for use in research; and
(3) to obtain information on flavorings and other constituents in non-combustible flavored products, including
concept flavors. Overall, the MMC will provide a critical service to the projects and pilot investigators and the
tobacco regulatory science community. In addition to serving the USC TCORS, the MMC will work with the
Administrative Core, which will disseminate the MMC’s novel measures, experimental stimuli, and constituent
analysis results, as well as supporting documentation outward on the TCORS website and other national venues.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10664813
- **Project number:** 2U54CA180905-11
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
- **Principal Investigator:** Matthew Gesner Kirkpatrick
- **Activity code:** U54 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2023
- **Award amount:** $293,830
- **Award type:** 2
- **Project period:** 2013-09-19 → 2028-08-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10664813

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10664813, MMC (2U54CA180905-11). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10664813. Licensed CC0.

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