Multidimensional Assessment of Internet Addiction: Scale Development and Validation

The current study attempts to explore and measure the multidimensional nature of Internet Addiction in India. Based on prior studies and respondent interviews, certain themes were developed. These themes were combined with items from Young's Internet addiction test (IAT) to propose an initial 25-item questionnaire. The scale was first administered on a sample of 294 urban Indian adults and subjected to an exploratory factor analysis (EFA). This resulted in four factors, namely Internet compulsive disorder (ICD), Internet craving (IC), Internet obsession (IO) and addictive behaviour (AB). Eight items with loadings below 0.5 were removed. The obtained 17-item scale was validated on a new sample of 320 Internet users. Findings from the confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) further confirmed the four-factor structure. The goodness of fit indices were found to be within acceptable limits. The instrument had satisfactory construct validity and high reliability scores. The study makes a unique contribution towards measuring and evaluating Internet addiction as a multidimensional construct and is aimed at enhancing our understanding of the impact of Internet platform on human psychology and behaviours.