Abstract

Internet addiction, also known as internet addiction disorder, is a growing phenomenon that draws more users as new advancements in communications technology become available. Like most other addictions, the dangerous effects of internet addiction take the form of undesirable changes in a person’s life. The danger of too much exposure of adolescents to internet is shown in the social adjustment, become isolated from people, affect their academic performance, also resulting in maladjusted behaviours such as online dating, gambling, and fraud. This study aimed at designing scale to detect the level of internet absorption among adolescents for possible psychological interventions. The main objective of the present research was to develop and validate an indigenous self-report measure of the adolescent internet addiction scale. Samples of two hundred (200) adolescents which comprised males and females were randomly selected for the study across Ibadan City. They were administered the indigenous Adolescent Internet Addiction Scale (AIAS) and a foreign Internet Addiction Test (IAT) by Young (1996). The scale of Internet Addiction Test (IAT) was compared to the Adolescent Internet Addiction Scale. Principal Component Analysis with orthogonal (varimax) rotation was used to verify the relationship between variables. Construct and concurrent validity were established by correlating the two instruments. All the analyses were tested for significance at the 0.05 level. A total of 23 items defining factors, that collectively accounted for 58.4% of variance were selected. The reliability estimate of alpha coefficient was α =0.87, while the internet addiction was revalidated before it was used to measure the level of internet addiction among the selected participants and has 0.88 reliability coefficient (Cronbach’s alpha) and item-total correlations ranging from (r = .799 to r = .322). Convergent validity of the Scale of internet addiction scale was determined by estimating correlation between AIAS and IAT test scores and significant positive correlation (r = .686, p< .01) was found. The convergent validity was further supplemented by correlating scores on SEI with peer rating and significant positive correlation (r= 90, p<.05) was found. The correlation between the self-developed scale and internet addiction test has made it valid and reliable to be used to measure internet addiction among adolescents.