Construct
In this modern time, the smartphone has taken a huge role in our daily life. Not long ago, mobile devices only limited to calling and sending short messages, but now smartphone offers a far more interactive way for us to connect with more people and stay connected from anywhere in the world. The smartphone combines multiple functions such as navigation, photography, gaming, media player, and much more into one tiny device a size of our fist. The smartphone users also connected to the Internet via a high-speed Wi-Fi and 4G LTE connectivity, allowing them to access information on the Internet, and enjoy interactive social applications that require the Internet connection.
Because of its practicality, the smartphone has become a close companion for some people instead of just a daily device. Smartphone has taken its place in our society, and its users will continue to grow as it continues to make the day to day life of modern society easier by offering plenty of useful applications in one single device. The number of smartphone users around the globe is expected to reach five billion users by the end of 2020, and 6.1 billion users in three years (“6.1bn smartphone users,” 2017). Back in 2014, the number of smartphone users was expected to reach 1.75 billion users (Drubin, 2014).
Despite all of its advantages, the popularity, and practicality of the smartphone posed one major setback to our society. It causes our society to become addicted to it, and there are plenty of signs to indicate the overuse of smartphone. Its consequences affect both physical and mental health of its users. Among the known consequences of overusing a smartphone at the wrong time is road accident caused by using the smartphone while driving.
Its benefits and setback spark the interest to further investigate this phenomenon in the attempt to understand this phenomenon from various aspects such as symptoms, age and gender differences, the influence of socioeconomic status, peer pressure, personality traits etcetera. Recent studies conducted among university students in China show that students that are exposed to the risk of smartphone overuse are the ones with the high score in procrastination and impulsivity. This study also shows that those who express more addiction symptoms will have a greater chance to overuse their smartphone (Leung & Liang, 2016). Another study in this field of interest tries to establish diagnostic criteria for smartphone addiction, to which the criteria shows strong similarities to substances addition (Lin et al., 2016). Another study gathered the sample from university students in Mainland China in the attempt to understand the connection between factors such as loneliness and shyness to smartphone addiction. This study finds that students with the high score in loneliness and shyness are more prone to having smartphone addiction (Bian & Leung, 2014).
Item Development
This scale will be developed based on the Smartphone Addiction Scale (SAS) developed by Lee, Lim, Son, Kwak, & Chang (2016). A self-diagnostic program developed to understand the Internet addiction in Korea (K-scale) inspired the development of the SAS. Thirty-eight of the key items in the K-scale were retained with ten additional items to distinguish smartphone and its features from the K-scale. These forty-eight items were later categorized into seven smaller scales with each item has a 1 to 6 points. These seven smaller groups will represent daily life disturbance, disturbance of reality testing, positive anticipation, withdrawal, cyberspace-oriented relationship, overuse, and tolerance (Lee, et al., 2016).
The validity of this scale is verified using Kimberly Young Internet Addiction Test, Y-scale (Young, 1998). The scale was developed based on a set of eight questions that would classify the subjects into two categories. This is a ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ part of the Y-scale. Subjects who responded ‘yes’ to the questions more than five times considered as Internet addicts, and anyone below five ‘yes’ as average Internet users. Y-scale measures Internet addiction based on twenty items with each item has a five-point scale. These twenty items in the Y-scale is added to measure the consistency of the respond given to the eight questions asked earlier. To increase the validity of the entire setup, Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) is added, and it serves a different purpose than the Y-scale. Y-scale serves as a tool to differentiate Internet addicts from normal Internet users, while VAS serves as a tool to verify the validity of the smaller scales in the SAS. This would further determine the consistency of the response given to the 48 items in the SAS that represent seven smaller scales. VAS will integrate a set of seven questions that directly correspond to SAS seven smaller scales. The VAS would allow the subjects to rate the seriousness of their addiction to their smartphone (Lee, et al., 2016). In this questionnaire, each question in the VAS will have 5 point scale, instead of 10 (Lee, et al., 2016), with the smallest point (#1) will account for the less bothering and the largest point (#5) will account for the most bothering. Although the validity of this questionnaire can be verified via several tools, we still lack research in the similar study that would address and guide the development of this scale to tackle any possible reliability issue.
Administering Guides
The purpose of this part in this construct is to guide those who will administer and evaluate the test. The point here is to ensure similar administering practice that would further ensure the validity of this construct. This test is developed to understand about smartphone addiction among the college community, which later divided into two groups; those who were born before 1990 and those who were born after. To carry out this test, the administers need to follow the following criteria;
– Subjects must own a smartphone
– Subjects must be between the age of 18 to 27 for the Millenial group, and between 28 to 35 for the non-Millenial group
– Must be able to read and respond in the English language
– Must not have involved in any similar test within six months before taking the test
Utility
The purpose of this test, which is called as the Millenial Smartphone Addiction Test (MSAT), is to understand the phenomenon of smartphone addiction. This test will compare the attachment between the millennial group and their smartphone, with the non-millennial group by asking questions that touch these subjects’ relationship with their smartphone in their daily life. Questions such as; a) how badly do you feel when you don’t have your smartphone with you, and b) how severe do you think of your addiction to the smartphone will help us understand this phenomenon.
Smartphone contributes the value of convenience to the modern society. And yet, overuse of smartphone has proven to be fatal to our physical health. More research needs to be done to understand this new addiction fully, and more efforts from the public are needed to address the risk of overusing smartphone to the public’s mental and physical health and safety. One of the examples of such initiatives was the project led by Toyota Motor Corporation that would encourage drivers not to use their smartphone while driving, in return these drivers will get redeemable coupons for free coffee (“Final result,” 2016).
References
6.1bn smartphone users worldwide by 2020. (2017). The Saudi Gazette.
Drubin, C. (2014). Smartphone users worldwide will total 1.75B in 2014. Microwave Journal, 57(3), 51
Leung, L., & Liang, J. (2016). Psychological Traits, Addiction Symptoms, and Feature Usage as Predictors of Problematic Smartphone Use among University Students in China. International Journal of Cyber Behavior, Psychology and Learning (IJCBPL), 4(6), 57-74.
Lin, Y., Chiang, C., Lin, P., Chang, L., Ko, C., Lee, Y., & Lin, S. (2016). Proposed diagnostic criteria for smartphone addiction. PLoS One, 11(11).
Bian, M., & Leung, L. (2014). Linking Loneliness, Shyness, Smartphone Addiction Symptoms, and Patterns of Smartphone Use to Social Capital. Social Science Computer Review,33(1), 61-79.
Lee, J., Lim, J., Son, H., Kwak, H., & Chang, M. (2016). Development and Validation of a Smartphone Addiction Scale Based on Behavioral Addiction Criteria. The Korean Journal Of Counseling And Psychotherapy,28(2), 425.
Young, K. S. (1998). Internet Addiction: The Emergence of a New Clinical Disorder. CyberPsychology & Behavior,1(3), 237-244.
Final results of the driving barista application project aiming to prevent smartphone-related traffic accidents. (2016, Nov 15). JCN Newswire