​The authors examined the factor structure of three smoking-related items administered in the 2009 California Health Interview Survey. Factorial invariance was examined across Asian Americans, Caucasians, African Americans, and Latin Americans, and across young men and women. Factorial invariance analyses revealed all minority ethnic groups to be significantly different from Caucasians, and men to differ significantly from women. These findings suggest that the types of smoking behaviors assessed in CHIS do not predict behaviors uniformly across groups.