using element on a list as condition statement

[buran]

Your example is not correct.
When using set in the first approach (using in and set) you measure also the conversion to set

the correct comparison between the two approaches would be:

from timeit import timeit
print(timeit('target in spam', setup='spam = set(range(11, 1000)); target=11'))
print(timeit('any(target == item for item in spam)', setup='spam = set(range(11, 1000)); target = 11'))

Output:
0.02962722000006579
0.45690207600000576

from timeit import timeit
print(timeit('target in spam', setup='spam = set(range(11, 1000)); target=999'))
print(timeit('any(target == item for item in spam)', setup='spam = set(range(11, 1000)); target = 999'))

Output:
0.046424419999993916
56.531857142000035

same result, with using list in both cases:

from timeit import timeit
print(timeit('target in spam', setup='spam = list(range(11, 1000)); target=11'))
print(timeit('any(target == item for item in spam)', setup='spam = list(range(11, 1000)); target = 11'))

Output:
0.041607157000044026
0.4492151309998462

from timeit import timeit
print(timeit('target in spam', setup='spam = list(range(11, 1000)); target=999'))
print(timeit('any(target == item for item in spam)', setup='spam = list(range(11, 1000)); target = 999'))

Output:
11.636881140000014
49.844653193999875

just the set conversion, i.e. how much you "add" in your set examples:

from timeit import timeit
print(timeit('set(spam)', setup='spam = list(range(11, 1000))'))

Output:
13.877401454999927