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Section 6. Psychology
https://doi.org/10.29013/ESR-20-5.6-31-39
Akpunne Bede Chinonye, Ph D., Senior Lecturer, Department of Behavioural Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, Redeemer's University, Osun State, Nigeria.
E-mail: akpunneb@run.edu.ng Akinnawo Ebenezer Olutope, Professor of Clinical Psychology, Department of Behavioural Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, Redeemer's University, Osun State, Nigeria.
E-mail: topewutoji@yahoo.com Bello Ibukunoluwa Busayo, Lecturer and Postgraduate Student, Department of Behavioural Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, Redeemer's University, Osun State, Nigeria.
E-mail: belloi1@run.edung
VALIDATION OF BERGEN FACEBOOK ADDICTION SCALE AMONG NIGERIAN UNIVERSITY UNDERGRADUATES
Abstract
Background: Research studies show a high penetration rate of Facebook usage among Nigerian most ofwhich are compulsive. The Bergen Facebook Addiction Scale (BFAS) had been validated in many languages and is used in many countries but not yet in Nigeria. This study validates BFAS to determine psychometric properties acceptable for Nigerian population.
Method: A total of 864 (mean age 20.5) undergraduates purposively selected from two state-owned and two privately owned Universities in Osun state southwestern Nigeria made up of 352 male and 512 females, participated in the study. Participants responded to Bergen Facebook Addiction Scale (BFAS), Internet Addiction Test (IAT), and Smartphone Addiction Scale- Short Version (SAS-SV).
Results: Determined new norm for the six factors of BFAS for both male and female ranged from > 42.3 (relapse) to > 50.5 (mood modification). Internal consistency showed a Cronbach's coefficient of .90, a Spearman-Brown coefficient of .83 and Guttman Split-Half coefficient of .83. All items in the scale reported acceptable goodness-of-fit measures revealing corrected item-total correlations range of .88 to .90. All the factors of BFAS had acceptable Cronbach standardized alpha ranging from salience .73, to mood modification .81. Significant positive correlation was observed between the scales revealing concurrent validity scores of r = .558, p= .000 between BFAS and SAS-SV and r = .508, p = .000 between BFAS and IAT.
Conclusion: BFAS is none gender sensitive and has acceptable psychometric properties for Nigerian population.
Keywords: Validation, Facebook Addiction, undergraduates, Nigeria.
Introduction on the on general theory of addiction, BFAS in the
According to Global Digital Report [1] the opinion of Griffiths, Kuss, & Demetrovics, [5] is number of social media users worldwide in 2018 is possibly the most accurate instrument for measur-
3.196 billion. The global social network penetration as at January 2018 stood at 42%, with West Africa having 11% social network penetration [2]. The demand for social network sites across the globe is huge and still growing. By the fourth quarter of 2016 Facebook was the first social network site to surpass 1 billion registered accounts and in a ranking by number of active users in October 2018 by Statista [2] is the most famous social network sites worldwide recording 2.23 billion monthly active users. In the third quarter of 2017 Nigeria reported a 41 percent penetration rate in Facebook usage [2], and by January 2018 Nigeria annual growth rate of social media users stood at 6% [1].
Andreassen & Pallesen, [3] defined social networking addiction as "being overly concerned about Social Networking Sites (SNSs), driven by a strong motivation to log on and use SNSs and a devotion of so much time and effort to SNSs that it impairs other social activities, studies/job, interpersonal relationships, and/or psychological health and well-being". Over the years scholars have studied the use and addiction of Facebook and its effect on human behavior. The Bergen Facebook Addiction Scale (BFAS) was developed by Andreassen, Torsheim, Brunborg, and Pallesen, [4]. It is an eighteen -item scale with six factors. Being built
ing Facebook addiction to date [6].
In line with the addiction theories, BFAS measures symptoms as salience (being preoccupied with social networking), tolerance (spending more time social networking in order to feel satisfied), mood modification (using social networking sites to feel better), conflict (social networking over most other important life aspects), withdrawal (experiencing withdrawal symptoms when prohibited from social networking), problems (social networking cause some kind of harm), and relapse (finding it difficult controlling or stopping the social networking behavior) [6; 7; 8].
According to APA [9] the items of BFAS is worded following the format of formal diagnostic addiction criteria, is brief, has recommended scores and possess adequate acceptable psychometric properties [3, 4]. Mobile technologies such as the smartphones and other mobile and devices have aided the rise of Facebook and other social networking addictions [3]; despite this trend there is no formal diagnosis of social networking addiction in any psychiatric nosology [7; 8]. Reported prevalence of Facebook addiction ranges between 1.6% [10] and 8.6% [11].
Bergen Facebook Addiction Scale has been validated in many languages including Thai [12], Turkish [13], Spanish [14], Portuguese [15], Bangla [16]
and Arabic using Egyptian samples [17]. However to the best of authors' knowledge, no validation study has been carried out on Nigerian sample. The focus of this study is, therefore, to validate the BFAS and obtain new norms and acceptable psychometric properties using a Nigerian population.
Materials and Methods
Participants
A cross sectional survey design was employed in the study. The population comprised ofUniversity undergraduates from two State-owned and two privately owned Universities in Osun state southwestern Nigeria. A random sampling technique was used to select the four universities in Osun state and four faculties in the universities, while a purposive sampling technique was adopted to select participants across the faculties, programmes, levels of study and gender. A total of 864 undergraduates participated in the study.
Measurements
The Bergen Facebook Addiction Scale (BFAS) [4] comprised a pool of 18 items, three for each of the six factors measuring symptoms of addiction [6]: salience, mood modification, tolerance, withdrawal, conflict, and relapse. Each item is rated on a 5-point scale using anchors of 1=very rarely, 2 = rarely, 3=sometimes, 4= often, 5=very often. Total score ranged from 6-30. Higher scores indicated higher level of addiction. The scale is concerned with experiences during the past one year related to Facebook use. The items are constructed in line with diagnostic criteria for pathological gambling [9] and the Game Addiction Scale [18]. Then, the item with the highest corrected item-total correlation from within each of the six addiction components was retained in the final six-item scale.
Existing Psychometric Properties of BFAS
The Cronbach's Alpha of this measure in the original study by Andreassen et al., [4] was 0.83. Item-total correlations were ranged from 0.60 to 0.73 and the test-retest reliability was 0.82 as reported by authors. This measure was highly correlated with the Addictive Tendencies Scale [19] and the Face-
book Attitude Scale [20]. Salem et.al [17] reported a Cronbach's coefficient of 0.88 among Egyptian, while Ahmed and Hossain [16] returned item-total correlation of each factor ranging from 0.735 (withdrawal) to 0.791 (salience), and a Cronbachs alpha coefficient of 0.91 among Bangladesh population.
Statistical Analysis
Descriptive statistics including mean and standard deviation were used to determine the new norms for the instrument while mean scores for gender was employed to determine the gender sensitivity of the norms.
To determine the internal consistency / reliability of BFAS, Cronbach's alpha, Spearman-Brown coefficient and Guttman Split-Half coefficient was calculated and obtained to determine the extent to which items in BFAS were interrelated. To determine the concurrent validity Pearson Moment Correlation Analysis was used to correlate BFAS with Internet Addiction Test (IAT) by Young [21] and Smartphone Addiction Scale-Short Version (SAS-SV) by Kwon, Lee, Won, Park, Min, and Hahn [22]. The items-total correlations were also obtained to test the relationship between each item and the composite / total item score.
Results
Demographic characteristics of the participants show that 352 (40%) were male while 512 (60%) were females. Distribution by age categories showed that 355(41%) were < 19 years while 509(59%) were > 20 years old. The mean (± SD) age of the participants is 20.48 ± 2.82 years. Further results revealed that 205(23.8%) of the participants were from Obafemi Awolowo University, 263(30.4%) were from Osun State University, 217(25.2%) were from Redeemer's University, and 179(20.5%) were students of Bowen University. Overall 414(54.3%) were students oftwo public owned institutions, while 450(45.7%) were students in private institutions of learning all in Osun state southwestern Nigeria.
Furthermore, participants from Faculty of Natural Sciences were 235(27.4%); 365(42.5%) were
from Faculty of Social Sciences, 131(15.0%) from Faculty ofHumanities / Education and 133(15.1%) were from the Faculty of Law. Finally, 197(22.9%) of the participants were in the first year of study; 211(24.5%) in the second year of study, 171(19.7%) were in the third year of study and 285(32.9%) in the final year of study in the selected universities.
Calculation of Norms of BFAS
Table 1.- Norm for both male and female adolescents
N = 864
Factors of BFAS Norms
Salience > 44.8
Tolerance > 45.7
Mood modification > 50.5
Relapse > 42.3
Withdrawal > 45.9
Conflict > 44.0
BFAS > 49.2
The cut off value (norm) of the factors and composite BFAS for both male and female Nigerian adolescents is summarized in (Table 1). By implication, any score above the norm is considered to be Face-book addiction. This cut off result shows that among Nigerian population BFAS is not gender sensitive.
Measure of Reliability of BFAS
In other to determine the reliability and verify the internal consistency of the items on Nigerian population, Cronbach's alpha (or alpha coefficient), Spearman-Brown coefficient and Guttman Split-Half coefficient were used. As summarized in (Table 2), the internal consistency, measured by Cronbach's coefficient was (a = 0.90), with a Spearman-Brown coefficient of.83 and Guttman Split-Half coefficient of 0.83. Corrected item total correlations range from 0.88 to 0.90. The result of this analysis shows that BFAS is reliable for the Nigerian population. All items in the scale resulted in acceptable goodness-of-fit measures.
Table 2.- Correlation Coefficients of Scale Items
N = 864
S/N Item Item mean SD Corrected item/total Cronbach's alpha if item is deleted
1 2 3 4 5 6
Item 1 Spent a lot of time thinking about Facebook or planned use of Face-book? 2.50 1.27 0.640** 0.90
Item 2 Thought about how you could free more time to spend on Face-book? 2.56 1.21 687** 0.90
Item 3 Thought a lot about what has happened on Facebook recently? 2.59 1.19 701** 0.90
Item 4 Spent more time on Facebook than initially intended? 2.84 1.22 701** 0.90
Item 5 Felt an urge to use Facebook more and more? 2.79 1.25 667** 0.90
Item 6 Felt that you had to use Facebook more and more in order to get the same pleasure from it? 2.69 1.20 726** 0.90
1 2 3 4 5 6
Item 7 Used Facebook in order to forget about personal problems? 2.87 1.25 687** 0.90
Item 8 Used Facebook to reduce feelings of guilt, anxiety, helplessness, and depression? 2.76 1.20 700** 0.90
Item 9 Used Facebook in order to reduce restlessness? 2.78 1.19 714** 0.90
Item 10 Experienced that others have told you to reduce your use of Face-book but not listened to them? 2.61 1.23 693** 0.90
Item 11 Tried to cut down on the use of Facebook without success? 2.68 1.22 718** 0.90
Item 12 Decided to use Facebook less frequently, but not managed to do so? 2.73 1.19 736** 0.90
Item 13 Become restless or troubled if you have been prohibited from using Facebook? 2.70 1.27 767** 0.89
Item 14 Become irritable if you have been prohibited from using Facebook? 2.67 1.21 707** 0.88
Item 15 Felt bad if you, for different reasons, could not log on to Social media /Smartphone Apps for some time? 2.77 1.23 740** 0.88
Item 16 Used Facebook so much that it has had a negative impact on your job/studies? 2.50 1.20 720** 0.88
Item 17 Given less priority to hobbies, leisure activities, and exercise because of Facebook? 2.73 1.23 679** 0.89
Item 18 Ignored your partner, family members, or friends because of Facebook? 2.65 1.28 662** 0.90
Table 3.- Pearson's correlation of factors and composite BFAS
N =864
Mean Standard deviation Factor- total correlation
1 2 3 4
Salience 7.43 3.08 0.641**
1 2 3 4
Tolerance 8.04 3.14 0.651**
Mood modification 8.19 3.13 0.649**
Relapse 7.71 3.08 0.674**
Withdrawal 7.91 3.20 0.666**
Conflict 7.81 3.24 0.601**
Table 3 reveals that each of the factors in the scale has significant positive correlation with the composite score of BFAS.
Cronbach's alpha was also used to measure the unidimensionality and homogeneity of the factors of BFAS. The observed Cronbach's a are: Salience a = 0.73, Tolerance a = 0.76, Mood modification a =0.81, Relapse a = 0.76, Withdrawal a =0.79 and Conflict a =.80. Each of the factors of BFAS has good and adequate internal consistency.
Measure of Validity of BFAS:
To measure the validity of BFAS, concurrent validity was employed to show how well BFAS compares to two other well established related tests. Using the Pearson's r, correlations between Bergen Facebook Addiction Scale (BFAS), Smartphone Addiction Scale - Short Version (SAS-SV) [22] and Internet Addiction Test (IAT) [23] were investigated. As summarized in (Table 4), BFAS correlated positively and significantly with SAS-SV and IAT. The correlations coefficient between ratings on BFAS and SAS-SV (r = .558, p= 0.000) was statistically significantly higher than between BFAS and IAT (r = 0.508, p = 0.000). This result shows that BFAS is valid for Nigerian population.
Table 4.- Pearson's correlation of BFAS, SAS-SV and IAT
(N=864)
SAS-SV IAT
BFAS 0.558** 0.508**
** Significant atp = 0.000
Discussions
This validation study used Adolescent population, drawing from reports that they have a tendency
of high level concentration when using social media than do adults; an action which can result into addiction [24]. Moreover adolescents are more vulnerable to internet and smartphone addiction than do adults [22; 24]. The BFAS cut off score was same for both male and female adolescents hence not found to be gender sensitive among Nigerian adolescents. In an earlier study Wong, Tho and Sin [25] found no significant gender difference in smartphone addiction among Malaysian undergraduates. This is also in tandem with reports of none gender sensitivity on Facebook addiction by Casas, Ruiz-Olivares and Ottega-Ruiz, [26] and smartphone addiction by Kwon et al., [22].
The BFAS in the Nigerian version reported a Cronbach alpha of 0.90, and item-total correlation ranging from 0.88 to 0.90. These are higher scores than the original Cronbach alphas of .83 and item-total correlation range of between 0.60 and .73 obtained by the author among Norwegian students [4], and Salem et.al [17] reported Cronbach's coefficient of .88 among an Egyptian sample. The implication of our finding shows a good inter-relatedness of the items of the BFAS, unidimensionality and homogeneity of the construct [27; 28] among the Nigerian population. The alpha scores are also not too high to render some items redundant as the alpha values did not exceed the maximum value of 0.90 [29; 30]. In summary the high alpha score in our study shows that BFAS has a strong reliability value.
Conclusions and Recommendations
Based on the findings of this study we conclude that BFAS has acceptable psychometric properties for Nigerian population. BFAS is not gender sensi-
tive and has new norms for the six factors as well as composite score among Nigerian populations. Accordingly, it can be said that BFAS fits well to the Nigerian socio-cultural setting as a measure of Face-book addiction. Further validation studies using a larger sample, as well as other geopolitical regions of Nigeria are recommended.
Ethical Considerations
This study carried out investigations that involved human elements hence ethics of research for human subjects were observed. The researcher reviewed online regulatory and informational documents on human-subject protection and passed the examination on responsible conduct of human studies and was issued a Certificate for Bioethics and Research by the Nigerian National Code of Health Research Ethics. Moreover, the research intention and
proposed procedures for carrying the research was subjected to scrutiny by the Internal Research Ethic Committee (IREC) of Redeemer's University, Ede, Osun State southwestern Nigeria. Also the approval of research committees of Osun State University, and Bowen University was obtained before the research was embarked upon. Judging that the average age of respondents was eighteen years and therefore can make decisions of this magnitude for themselves, they were approached individually and explanation of what the study is all about was made to them and their willingness to participate was obtained. Thus participant's informed consent was obtained before the instruments were administered.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.
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