Fig. 1

Directed acyclic graph (DAG) demonstrating the pathways associated with age (green node) and interest in VR for smoking cessation (blue node with bold outline). White nodes represented adjusted variables. Grey nodes represent unmeasured variables. Other blue nodes represent mediators. The green arrows represent the various causal pathways. Some arrows are bi-directional. While the arrows pointing towards interest in VR for any purpose may factor directly into an interest in VR for smoking cessation, this likely represents a small subset of the population, and these arrows were omitted for clarity. The absence of pink lines suggests that this model is sufficiently adjusted