Psychometric Analysis and Validation of the Italian Bergen Facebook Addiction Scale

Abstract

Social media use, and specifically Facebook use, has become increasingly popular over the past decade. Despite the many benefits of social networking, a small minority of individuals appear to develop issues surrounding social media use, and more specifically Facebook use. It has, therefore, led some scholars to describe such problematic activity as a behavioral addiction. Such problematic behaviors have been reported in many countries including Italy. The present study validated and examined the reliability and validity of the Italian version of the Bergen Facebook Addiction Scale (BFAS) by conducting a psychometric examination among an Italian sample of adults (n = 217; aged 18 to 68 years). Internal reliability was examined using various indicators, including Cronbach's α, which was excellent (α = 0.94). Results indicated that Facebook addiction was significantly correlated with social media addiction, smartphone addiction, narcissism, depression, and self-esteem. The results of the present study support the use of the Italian version of the BFAS in research and confirms the uni-dimensional nature of the single factor proposed by the original authors.Keywords Behavioral addiction . Social networking site addiction . Social media addiction . Bergen Facebook Addiction Scale . BFAS Social networking sites (SNSs), such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, are virtual communities whose main objective is for users to be able to interact with other people from all over the world, sharing opinions and passions via direct messages or in public virtual spaces such as comments, statuses, and groups (Boyd and Ellison 2007;Kuss and Griffiths 2017). Besides being beneficial to individuals for the diffusion of shared knowledge and potential academic and professional opportunities, connecting with people allows the satisfaction of several basic human needs, such as social support or being able to express one's skills (or some aspects of one's self) with as many people as possible (e.g., Li 2010). The search for friends, social

Measuring Problematic Facebook Use among Adolescents and Young Adults with the Bergen Facebook Addiction Scale: A Psychometric Analysis by Applying Item Response Theory

“…The association between PFU and problematic Internet use had been previously reported (e.g., [ 27 , 28 , 29 , 30 ]), and could be explained by the fact that PFU could be considered a specific form of problematic Internet use [ 9 ]. Along the same lines, the relationship between PFU and problematic SNSs use has been previously reported e.g., [ 40 , 93 ], but the magnitude of the relationship found in the present study was not strong enough to conclude an overlap between the two constructs.…”

“…The Italian version [ 40 ] of the BFAS [ 10 ] was used. It comprises six items (e.g., “How often during the last year did you use Facebook in order to forget about personal problems?”) scored between 1 (very rarely) and 5 (very often) with higher scores denoting higher levels of PFU.…”

“…As the authors of previous systematic reviews stated [ 94 , 95 ], future studies should propose hypotheses specific to different SNSs because not considering the type of sites included under the umbrella term of “social networking” might suppress relevant differences in people’s motivations to use SNSs [ 94 , 95 ], as well as in the negative consequences due to their excessive use, which may be different in relation to the specific type of SNS (e.g., [ 40 , 93 ]. Given its good psychometric properties, the use of the BFAS could be helpful for researchers to better understand the specificity of PFU in relation to other types of problematic SNSs use (e.g., Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter).…”

“…The BFAS psychometric properties have been assessed in different international studies, including Poland [ 26 ], Portugal [ 27 , 28 , 29 ], Brazil [ 30 ], Egypt [ 31 ], Tunisia [ 32 ], Peru [ 33 ], Pakistan [ 34 , 35 ], Bangladesh [ 36 ], Thailand [ 37 ], Turkey [ 38 ], Iran [ 39 ], and Italy [ 40 ]. Results demonstrated that satisfactory psychometric properties were found, including reliability and convergent validity.…”

“…Since PFU diffused to various cultural contexts, it seems important to confirm the properties of the scale in different cultures. In this regard, recently, the Italian BFAS psychometric properties have been explored [ 40 ]. A confirmatory factor analysis confirmed the construct validity demonstrating that it assesses a unidimensional construct.…”