Special Journal Tracks Disparities in Tobacco-Related Public Health The Tobacco Research Network on Disparities (TReND) announces the release of a supplemental journal issue titled Conceptual and Methodological Issues for Research on Tobacco-Related Health Disparities. TReND is a network created to understand and address tobacco-related health disparities by advancing the science, translating that scientific knowledge into practice, and informing public policy. TReND is sponsored by the National Cancer Institute and the American Legacy Foundation® The journal supplement addresses challenges that impact the ability of the public health world to reduce tobacco-related health disparities. Donna Vallone, Senior Vice President and Jane Allen, staff member both of American Legacy Foundation's Research and Evaluation department, are two of the authors featured in the supplement. The goal of this research was to assess the reliability and validity of a measurement called the Brief Sensation Seeking Scale (BSSS-4), in terms of race and ethnicity. Sensation seeking has been linked to a number of youth risk behaviors — including smoking. Therefore, the BSSS-4 has been deemed a useful tool for identifying youth at risk for smoking. However, African American youth who are open to smoking or have experimented with cigarettes have lower sensation-seeking scores than White or Hispanic youth. In other words, the principles of the sensation-seeking scale would have predicted that these African American youth — open to smoking or experimenters — would have higher sensation-seeking scores than they actually do. The study concludes that the BSSS-4 is a less reliable and valid for African American youth than for other youth. The authors call for further research into other existing sensation seeking scales, and into whether an alternative scale should be developed for African Americans. To view the entire supplement, go online to http://dccps.nci.nih.gov/tcrb/trend/index.html.