Suganya E, Arvinth A, Abirami R
Department of Community Medicine, Sri Venkateshwaraa Medical College Hospital and Research Centre, Puducherry, India.
Department of Pharmacology, Sri Venkateshwaraa Medical College Hospital and Research Centre, Puducherry, India.
J Family Med Prim Care. 2024 Nov;13(11):5139-5144. doi: 10.4103/jfmpc.jfmpc_832_24. Epub 2024 Nov 18.
With young people and teenage children, India has recently become a hotspot for a multiple-fold increase in internet users. The objective of our study was planned to create a psychometric scale specially targeting school and college students with appropriate validation and cut-off derivation, as these groups are collective and also holds a major burden of internet addiction and also a potential risk group for developing internet addiction disorder.
This was a cross-sectional study with a sample size of 1530 done among college students and school students studying between IX to XII standard with habit of internet usage. A google form survey questionnaire was used and study was conducted for a period of 2 months. Domain identified was Internet addiction which was followed by Item generation done by both Inductive, Deductive method and Content validity obtained from the field experts. After Cognitive Interviewing, survey was conducted by circulating the constructed scale in the Google form questionnaire to the eligible participants. After collecting the required data from the participants, the scale was subjected to Item Reduction Analysis.
The mean age of the study participants was 18.96 ±3.68 years and most of them were females. All the individual items had discrimination index value of higher than 0.75 and Cronbach's alpha of 0.75. The total weighed score calculated by adding the individual weighed score came as 21078. Correction factor obtained by dividing the weighed score to the raw score was 0.89. Using the Internet Addiction Scale for School and College Students (IASSCS) having a cut off value of 16 to delineate a person to have Internet addiction and No Internet addiction, around 63% of the study participants were found to have internet addiction and 37% of them were not having Internet addiction and among them a greater number of Internet addicts were found to be male compared to females.
Due to the fact that internet addiction is linked to numerous physical and mental health problems, it may be more beneficial to use scale reports as screening tools at the primary health care level in order to identify high-risk groups for health problems caused by internet addiction at the earliest.
印度的年轻人和青少年儿童近期已成为互联网用户成倍增长的热点地区。我们研究的目的是制定一个专门针对中小学生和大学生的心理测量量表，并进行适当的效度验证和临界值推导，因为这些群体具有群体性，且承受着网络成瘾的主要负担，同时也是发展成网络成瘾障碍的潜在风险群体。
这是一项横断面研究，样本量为1530，研究对象为就读于九年级至十二年级且有互联网使用习惯的大学生和中小学生。使用谷歌表单调查问卷，研究为期2个月。确定的领域为网络成瘾，随后通过归纳法、演绎法生成条目，并从领域专家处获得内容效度。经过认知访谈后，通过在谷歌表单调查问卷中向符合条件的参与者发放编制好的量表来进行调查。从参与者那里收集所需数据后，对量表进行条目简化分析。
研究参与者的平均年龄为18.96±3.68岁，其中大多数为女性。所有单个条目的区分度指数值均高于0.75，克朗巴哈系数为0.75。将各个加权分数相加得到的总加权分数为21078。通过将加权分数除以原始分数得到的校正因子为0.89。使用截断值为16的《中小学生及大学生网络成瘾量表》（IASSCS）来界定一个人是否有网络成瘾，结果发现约63%的研究参与者有网络成瘾，37%没有网络成瘾，其中网络成瘾者中男性数量多于女性。
鉴于网络成瘾与众多身心健康问题相关，在初级卫生保健层面将量表报告用作筛查工具，以便尽早识别出因网络成瘾导致健康问题的高危群体，可能会更有益处。
