Social Media Addiction Scale - Student Form: The Reliability and Validity Study

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study is to develop a valid and reliable measurement tool to determine the social media addictions of secondary school, high school and university students. 998 students participated in the study. 476 students from secondary schools, high schools and universities participated in the first application during which the exploratory factor analysis of the scale was conducted. 298 students participated in the second application during which the confirmatory factor analysis was carried out. Test-retest method was used to determine the consistency of the scale with the participation of 224 student. Expert opinion, exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, total item correlations, mean differences between upper and lower groups, internal consistency coefficient and test-retest correlation coefficients were calculated within the scope of assessing the validity and reliability of the research. According to the exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, the scale has a 4-factor structure accounting for 53.16% of the total variance. Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) coefficient and the Bartlett’s test were found significant respectively at .96 and χ2=12680.88 (p=.00). Internal consistency coefficient (Cronbach’s alpha coefficient) was found .93 for the whole scale and at values ranging from .81 to .86 for the sub-factors. Test-retest coefficient was found .94. In conclusion, SMA-SF is a 5-point Likert-type scale consisting of 29 items grouped under 4 factors (virtual tolerance, virtual communication, virtual problem and virtual information). The statistical analysis indicates that the scale is valid and reliable enough to be used in determining the social media addictions of secondary school, high school and university students.