Measurement invariance of the Phubbing Scale across 20 countries

Abstract

M obile phone addiction is a robust phenomenon observed throughout the world. The social aspect of mobile phone use is crucial; therefore, phubbing is a part of the mobile phone addiction phenomenon. Phubbing is defined as ignoring an interlocutor by glancing at one's mobile phone during a face-to-face conversation. The main aim of this study was to investigate how the Phubbing Scale (containing 10 items) might vary across countries, and between genders. Data were collected in 20 countries: Belarus,

The Phubbing Scale (PS-8) in the Portuguese population: psychometric properties

“…The Phubbing Scale (PS; Karadağ et al, 2015) comprises 10 items, each rated on a 5-point Likert-type scale (1 = never; 5 = always) and distributed across two factors (5 items each): communication disturbance, which measures how individuals disturb their communication by dealing with their mobile phones in a face-to-face communication environment; and phone obsession, reflecting the extent to which individuals need their mobile phone in environments lacking face-to-face communication. For the present study, we used the Portuguese version of the refined 8-item scale (PS-8) proposed by Błachnio et al (2021), in which each factor comprises four items (see Table 2). Scores on both factors range from 4 to 20.…”

“…Blanca and Bendayan (2018) developed the Spanish version of the PS, providing evidence of the aforementioned two-factor structure and validity evidence based on positive associations with measures of Internet addiction, Facebook intrusion, and fear of missing out. More recently, Błachnio et al (2021) analyzed the factor structure and measurement invariance of the PS across 20 countries. They tested one-factor and two-factor models, both including the 10 original items.…”

“…They also provided evidence of measurement invariance across gender. Although Portugal was one of the countries included in this study, further research into the psychometric properties of the PS-8 is warranted in order to provide more validity evidence about its use in the Portuguese population and validity evidence based on relationships with other variables, the latter being an aspect that was not addressed in the study by Błachnio et al (2021). In this context, it is particularly relevant to provide new evidence of the measurement invariance across gender to demonstrate whether the instrument has the same factor pattern and whether items reflect the same latent construct for men and women.…”

“…Given that the PS-8 allows for comparisons across countries and hence is potentially applicable in future cross-cultural research (Błachnio et al, 2021), the goal here was to extend knowledge about its use in the Portuguese population. Specifically, we aimed to provide validity evidence based on the internal structure of the PS-8 to examine measurement invariance across gender, to analyze the reliability of test scores, and item homogeneity, and to provide validity evidence based on relationships with other relevant variables, namely, time spent on the Internet on weekdays and at the weekend, time spent on social networking sites, number of social networks used, Internet addiction, problematic mobile phone use, Facebook intrusion, fear of missing out, and depression.…”

Country Indicators Moderating the Relationship Between Phubbing and Psychological Distress: A Study in 20 Countries

“…The main aim of our exploratory study was to investigate the moderating role of country-level indicators in the relations between phubbing and psychological distress. It should be noted that the analyses of measurement invariance across countries for the psychological distress and phubbing variables showed only metric invariance (see Błachnio et al, 2021), which allowed us to compare countries in terms of correlations between variables. It did not, however, allow us to compare countries in terms of the levels of particular variables, which is the most common type of cross-cultural comparisons.…”