Translation and Validation of the Nomophobia Questionnaire in the Italian Language: Exploratory Factor Analysis

Abstract

BackgroundNomophobia, which is a neologism derived from the combination of “no mobile,” “phone,” and “phobia” is considered to be a modern situational phobia and indicates a fear of feeling disconnected.ObjectiveNo psychometric scales are available in Italian for investigating such a construct. We therefore planned a translation and validation study of the Nomophobia Questionnaire (NMP-Q), which is an instrument developed by Yildirim and Correia. Subjects were recruited via an online survey using a snowball approach.MethodsThe NMP-Q was translated from English into Italian using a classical “backwards and forwards” procedure. In order to explore the underlying factor structure of the translated questionnaire, an exploratory factor analysis was carried out. A principal component analysis approach with varimax rotation was performed. Multivariate regression analyses were computed to shed light on the psychological predictors of nomophobia.ResultsA sample of 403 subjects volunteered to take part in the study. The average age of participants was 27.91 years (standard deviation 8.63) and the sample was comprised of 160 males (160/403, 39.7%) and 243 females (243/403, 60.3%). Forty-five subjects spent less than 1 hour on their mobile phone per day (45/403, 11.2%), 94 spent between 1 and 2 hours (94/403, 23.3%), 69 spent between 2 and 3 hours (69/403, 17.1%), 58 spent between 3 and 4 hours (58/403, 14.4%), 48 spent between 4 and 5 hours (48/403, 11.9%), 29 spent between 5 and 7 hours (29/403, 7.2%), 36 spent between 7 and 9 hours (36/403, 8.9%), and 24 spent more than 10 hours (24/403, 6.0%). The eigenvalues and scree plot supported a 3-factorial nature of the translated questionnaire. The NMP-Q showed an overall Cronbach alpha coefficient of 0.95 (0.94, 0.89, and 0.88 for the three factors). The first factor explained up to 23.32% of the total variance, while the second and third factors explained up to 23.91% and 18.67% of the variance, respectively. The total NMP-Q score correlated with the number of hours spent on a mobile phone.ConclusionsThe Italian version of the NMP-Q proved to be reliable.

Evaluation of the Nomophobia’s Prevalence and Its Impact on School Performance Among Adolescents in Morocco

“…Our objective affirms that there is a relationship between Nomophobie and academic performance and we found that the massive use of mobile phone has an impact on academic performance among adolescents. A study by Adawi et al (2018) The NMP-Q translated from English to Italian had a Cronbach global alpha of 0.95. It is almost equal between the girl-boy type but this dependence on smartphones (Nomophobia) is more frequent among the pupils in the middle school and it increases according to the Age (r = .112 **, p < .009, but in the high school cycle we found the students of the 1st year high school who were touched by the Nomophobia compared to the other level (1st year bachelor and 2nd year bachelor) which is explained in these last levels (1st year bachelor and 2nd year bachelor) that the students are in a hurry by the courses and preparation for the final exams.…”

Nomophobia: An Individual’s Growing Fear of Being without a Smartphone—A Systematic Literature Review

“…Finally, the articles aimed at validating an instrument for measuring nomophobia stand out. They have adapted the tool proposed by Yildrim and Correia [24] to different country contexts, such as Iran [7], Spain [17,27,28], and Israel [14], reaffirming its factors of validity and reliability [12]. Some review articles were also included [17,38,65].…”

“…Most research has nomophobia as the main and only study variable [1,4,7,14,[17][18][19][22][23][24]27,28,30,31,34,65]. However, other researchers have been interested in examining the relationship between nomophobia and physical factors, such as age [29,33,60], context [29], presence of Carpal tunnel syndrome or median nerve in the wrist [61], and gender [32,33,35,39,58].…”

“…The samples used in the various studies vary considerably, both in number, where there is a range from one person to 3216, and in the population on which it is focused. First, in relation to the size of the sample, there are studies that have used a sample between one and 150 people [19,21,27,33,59,61], between 151 and 400 people [11,13,18,[23][24][25]30,31,34,35,60,62,64], between 401 and 1000 people [1,2,4,12,[14][15][16]22,26,29,32,36,37,39,58,63,65], or more than 1000 [7]. Second, with regard to population, studies have focused on volunteers of various classes and types [5,16,20,22,59,60], adolescents or youth [4,7,28,[34]…”

“…Nomophobia is seen as a type of contemporary phobia that emerged in the digital age [14][15][16], which is expanding after the integration of the smartphone into society [17]. This term has its origin in England and is the result of the conjunction "non-mobile" combined with "phobia", that is, fear, anxiety, and discomfort of not having a mobile device at a certain moment or not having access to a device when required [18][19][20][21].…”