Confirmation of the Three-Factor Model of Problematic Internet Use on Off-Line Adolescent and Adult Samples

Abstract

As the Internet became widely used, problems associated with its excessive use became increasingly apparent. Although for the assessment of these problems several models and related questionnaires have been elaborated, there has been little effort made to confirm them. The aim of the present study was to test the three-factor model of the previously created Problematic Internet Use Questionnaire (PIUQ) by data collection methods formerly not applied (off-line group and face-to-face settings), on the one hand, and by testing on different age groups (adolescent and adult representative samples), on the other hand. Data were collected from 438 highschool students (44.5 percent boys; mean age: 16.0 years; standard deviation = 0.7 years) and also from 963 adults (49.9 percent males; mean age: 33.6 years; standard deviation = 11.8 years). We applied confirmatory factor analysis to confirm the measurement model of problematic Internet use. The results of the analyses carried out inevitably support the original three-factor model over the possible one-factor solution. Using latent profile analysis, we identified 11 percent of adults and 18 percent of adolescent users characterized by problematic use. Based on exploratory factor analysis, we also suggest a short form of the PIUQ consisting of nine items. Both the original 18-item version of PIUQ and its short 9-item form have satisfactory reliability and validity characteristics, and thus, they are suitable for the assessment of problematic Internet use in future studies.

Psychometric Properties of the Problematic Online Gaming Questionnaire Short-Form and Prevalence of Problematic Online Gaming in a National Sample of Adolescents

“…16,17 In order to include all online gamers, an empirically based questionnaire comprising 18 items-the Problematic Online Gaming Questionnaire (POGQ)-was developed by the authors. 8 Koronczai et al 18 claimed that suitable measures should meet six requirements: (a) comprehensiveness (i.e., examining more, possibly all, aspects of problematic online gaming); (b) brevity (to assess the more impulsive population, as well and to facilitate incorporation into time limited surveys); (c) reliability/validity for different methods of data collection (online, paper and pencil self-rating, face to face); (d) reliability/validity for different age groups (adolescents and adults); (e) cross-cultural reliability/validity; and (f) validated on clinical samples. The measures should also serve as a basis for defining dependence cutoff scores.…”

The Problematic Internet Entertainment Use Scale for Adolescents: Prevalence of Problem Internet Use in Spanish High School Students

“…32 Finally, the categorization could be obtained through multivariate statistical analyses, such as cluster analysis. 28,53,61 In light of the above, the present study has three objectives: 1) to design and validate a new scale for adolescents, the Problematic Internet Entertainment Use Scale for Adolescence (PIEUSA), which centers on major Internet entertainments such as online video games (OVG) and social networking sites (SNS); 2) to examine the associations between patterns of Internet use identified with the PIEUSA and both gender and age groups; and 3) to estimate PIU prevalence using the categories from the classical pathological gambling literature to assess levels of severity.…”

Individual Differences and the Development of Internet Addiction

“…The PIUQ-SF-6 ) is a shorter version of the Problematic Internet Use Questionnaire (PIUQ) (Demetrovics, Szeredi, & Rózsa, 2008), which is a psychometric tool that has been shown to possess adequate psychometric properties across different samples (Koronczai et al, 2011. The PIUQ-SF-6 assesses three dimensions of problematic Internet use (i.e., obsession, neglect, and control disorder) and was developed by selecting two items from each of the three PIUQ factors.…”