Validation of Smartphone Addiction Scale– Short Version on Nigerian University Undergraduates

Abstract

Research shows that Nigerians are ranked among the top 20 users of smartphones, of which a good number are maladaptive. There is however to the best of our knowledge no indigenous instruments designed to measure this phenomenon. This study is a validation of Smartphone Addiction Scale –Short Version (SAS-SV) developed by Kwon and his colleagues. 854 undergraduates (352 male and 512 females) purposively drawn from four universities in Osun state Nigeria. These students responded to Internet addiction Test (IAT), Smartphone Addiction Scale- Short Version (SAS-SV) The Bergen Facebook Addiction Scale (BFAS). Overall cronbach’s alpha correlation coefficient of 0.82 was obtained for the SAS-SV. The corrected item-total correlations ranged from .54 to .71. The correlation between SAS-SV and IAT showed a concurrent validity score of .509, and .558 for BFAS. Significant positive correlation was equally observed between the SAS-SV and the factors of BFAS, ranging from conflict (r = .316, p < .001) to salience (r = .410, p < .001). Significant gender differences in pathological cut off values (norm) were observed. Determined new norm for SAS-SV was ≥ 43.2 for pathological Smartphone Addiction (SA) among males. While the norm for female sample was ≥ 41.8. Based on the findings of this study, we conclude that SAS-SV is gender sensitive and has acceptable psychometric properties for Nigerian population