Development, validity and reliability of a general adiction scale.: A preliminary study

Introduction: The authors develop a General Scale to measure the intensity of the addiction to substances (not alcohol, not opiates) and addictive behaviors. Methods: The General Scale is a self-scale compound by eleven items that was delivered to fifity and five students of the courses 5 degrees and 6 degrees of the Medicine of the University of Alcala (Madrid, Spain), and was them requested that applied said scale from different supposed addictive: tobacco; tea, coffee or cola drinks; chocolate; others sweet; alcohol; sex; use of the pesonal computer and/or Internet and/or videoplay; and to practice sports. Of that manner each subject provided a total of 440 complimented scales. Finally, it was requested the subjects that indicated in a scale apart, their degree of addiction from the different exposed concepts. Those data served of external criterion. Results and discussion: The Scale is monodimensional, and shows a high construct validity (account 6.3% of the total variance obtained by a Factorial Analysis), a high alpha reliability, (alpha: 0.94) and a good internal consistency (split-bay method with the Spearman-Brown correction; R: 0.92). All items share with the general addiction concept that represents the total score of the Scale, an common variance proportion equal or over the 52%. Conclusion. The Scale seems be a valid and reliable instrument to compare groups of the calls anew addictions of a measurable manner.