Sarah Tonkin

Federal Grant PI

Assistant Professor

University of Arkansas

Faculty Researcher

1 pubs

Research Areas

Biomedical Subjects

Links

ORCID

OverviewAI-generated summary

Sarah Tonkin's research primarily focuses on understanding and improving smoking cessation treatments, with a particular emphasis on the mechanisms through which these treatments operate. Her work investigates the role of psychological factors, such as affect and craving, as mediators in the effectiveness of pharmacotherapies like varenicline. She has explored how pre-treatment interventions, such as varenicline preloading, can influence smoking reduction and abstinence, examining sex-specific mediation pathways in randomized controlled trials.

Beyond pharmacotherapy mechanisms, Tonkin's research also examines methodological aspects of health behavior research. This includes evaluating compliance with ecological momentary assessment (EMA) in longitudinal studies and investigating best practices for EMA implementation through nationwide factorial experiments. She has also contributed to the psychometric evaluation of instruments used in smoking cessation trials, such as the Stanford Expectations of Treatment Scale (SETS), and has assessed the accuracy of devices used for measuring carbon monoxide levels in breath for individuals attempting to quit smoking.

Tonkin is a principal investigator on federal grants, including a $139,457 award from the NIH/National Institute on Drug Abuse. This grant supports a translational evaluation of depressive symptomology and smoking cessation treatment mechanisms for just-in-time-adaptive-interventions. Her publication record includes work on clinical trials, psychometric evaluations, and the assessment of smoking cessation tools.

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Publications: 1

Selected Publications

A Preliminary Study of Smoking Abstinence Effects on Acquisition and Reversal Learning in a Probabilistic Learning Task (2026)

Substance Use & Misuse DOI OpenAlex
Effects of Ecological Momentary Assessment Prompting Schedule on Affect Measurement Variability and Associations With Next-Day Health Behaviors (2026)

Assessment DOI OpenAlex
Daily variations and factors related to alcohol avoidance motivation and alcohol use among adults who are unhoused (2026)

The American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse DOI OpenAlex
Mental health and beliefs about abortion access following changes to reproductive healthcare laws in 2022: findings from Oklahoma (2025)

BMC Public Health DOI OpenAlex