Difficulties in establishing "Truth" conditions in the assessment of addictive smartphone use in young adults
Author
García-Manglano, Javier
López-Madrigal, Claudia
Sádaba-Chalezquer, Charo
Serrano, Cecilia
Lopez-Fernandez, Olatz
Publication date
2022ISSN
1660-4601
Abstract
The smartphone revolution has placed powerful, multipurpose devices in the hands of youth across the globe, prompting worries about the potential negative consequences of these technologies on mental health. Many assessment tools have been created, seeking to classify individuals into problematic and non-problematic smartphone users. These are identified using a cutoff value: a threshold, within the scale range, at which higher scores are expected to be associated with negative outcomes. Lacking a clinical assessment of individuals, the establishment of this threshold is challenging. We illustrate this difficulty by calculating cutoff values for the Short Version of the Smartphone Addiction Scale (SAS-SV) in 13 Spanish-speaking samples in 11 countries, using common procedures (i.e., reliability, validity, ROC methodology). After showing that results can be very heterogeneous (i.e., they lead to diverse cutoff points and rates of addiction) depending on the decisions made by the researchers, we call for caution in the use of these classifications, particularly when researchers lack a clinical definition of true addiction—as is the case with most available scales in the field of behavioral addictions—which can cause an unnecessary public health alert.
Document Type
Article
Document version
Published version
Language
English
Subject (CDU)
1 - Philosophy. Psychology
159.9 - Psychology
Keywords
Ús problemàtic del telèfon intel·ligent
Addicció als telèfons intel·ligents
Punts de tall
Escala d'addicció a telèfons intel·ligents
Espanyol SAS-SV
Malestar psicològic
Depressió
Ansietat
Estrès
Ús de les xarxes socials
Uso problemático de teléfonos inteligentes
Adicción a los teléfonos inteligentes
Puntos de corte
Escala de adicción a los teléfonos inteligentes
Español SAS-SV
Trastorno psicologico
Depresión
Ansiedad
Estrés
Uso de redes sociales
Pages
16
Publisher
MDPI
Collection
19; 1
Is part of
International Journal of Environmental Reseacrh and Public Health
Citation
García-Manglano, Javier; López-Madrigal, Claudia; Sádaba-Chalezquer, Charo [et al.]. Difficulties in establishing "Truth" conditions in the assessment of addictive smartphone use in young adults. International Journal of Environmental Reseacrh and Public Health, 2022, 19(1), 358. Disponible en: <https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/1/358>. Fecha de acceso: 6 feb. 2024. DOI: 10.3390/ijerph19010358
This item appears in the following Collection(s)
- Ciències de la Salut [738]
Rights
© 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Except where otherwise noted, this item's license is described as https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/