Investigating the Dimensionality of Young’s Internet Addiction Test for University Students Using Mokken Scale Analysis

OpenAlex İngilizce

The Internet Addiction Test has been used extensively by researchers to collect data from university students, However, empirical studies on the psychometric properties of this test have revealed conflicting results on the factor structure. Although the structure of Internet addiction is generally accepted as unidimensional, these contradictory results require further evidence for the unidimensional nature of the construct. Considering the existing problems regarding the factor structure of the Internet Addiction construct, the aim of this study was set as evaluating the unidimensionality of the Short Internet Addiction Test for University Students by using Mokken Scaling Analysis. The Internet Addiction Test short form was administered to 636 university students studying in Turkey in the 2020-21 academic year via an online data collection platform. The ages of the participants ranged from 20 to 65. The results revealed that the items of the Internet Addiction Test Short Form were scalable and homogeneous enough to form a separate scale. On the other hand, the results showed that the Internet Addiction Test Short Form did not have the Invariant Item Ranking feature. In addition, using the backward selection method, a seven-item form of the Internet Addiction Test Short Form, which has Invariant Item Ordering feature, is proposed. These results showed that the structure of internet addiction can be accepted as one-dimensional for Turkish university students. It is recommended to examine whether the results obtained in future studies can be generalized to different universes. Keywords: Mokken scaling analysis, internet addiction, dimensionality, university students.