Adaptation and Validation of the Spanish Version of the Nomophobia Questionnaire in Nursing Studies

Abstract

Nomophobia is the uncontrollable fear of leaving your house without your mobile phone and is currently having a significant impact on the younger population. The aim of this study was first to translate the original version (written in English) of the Nomophobia questionnaire, culturally adapting it to the Spanish sociolinguistic context, and subsequently to analyze the psychometric properties of the Spanish version with a sample of nursing students. In the first stage, a process of translation-back translation was carried out, following standardized recommendations. In order to validate the content, the adapted and agreed version of the Nomophobia questionnaire, consisting of 20 items, was submitted to a panel of 20 experts. After the content analysis and subsequent debate, a third version of the scale was obtained. The results confirmed a four-dimensional structure, the same as the original questionnaire, with a Cronbach's α value of .928 for the questionnaire as a whole, thus showing good internal consistency. The results of this study mean a suitable tool can be offered to nursing professionals with the aim of facilitating the diagnosis of addictive behaviors in relation to mobile phone use.

Nomophobia: An Individual’s Growing Fear of Being without a Smartphone—A Systematic Literature Review

“…Finally, the articles aimed at validating an instrument for measuring nomophobia stand out. They have adapted the tool proposed by Yildrim and Correia [24] to different country contexts, such as Iran [7], Spain [17,27,28], and Israel [14], reaffirming its factors of validity and reliability [12]. Some review articles were also included [17,38,65].…”

“…Most research has nomophobia as the main and only study variable [1,4,7,14,[17][18][19][22][23][24]27,28,30,31,34,65]. However, other researchers have been interested in examining the relationship between nomophobia and physical factors, such as age [29,33,60], context [29], presence of Carpal tunnel syndrome or median nerve in the wrist [61], and gender [32,33,35,39,58].…”

“…The samples used in the various studies vary considerably, both in number, where there is a range from one person to 3216, and in the population on which it is focused. First, in relation to the size of the sample, there are studies that have used a sample between one and 150 people [19,21,27,33,59,61], between 151 and 400 people [11,13,18,[23][24][25]30,31,34,35,60,62,64], between 401 and 1000 people [1,2,4,12,[14][15][16]22,26,29,32,36,37,39,58,63,65], or more than 1000 [7]. Second, with regard to population, studies have focused on volunteers of various classes and types [5,16,20,22,59,60], adolescents or youth [4,7,28,[34]…”

“…Most studies have conducted their research exclusively using the Nomophobia Questionnaire (NMP-Q) [1,2,4,7,13,14,18,19,22,24,[27][28][29][30][31][32]34,62,64] proposed by [24], which has been adequate and adapted to Persian [7], Indian [2], Spanish [27,28,34], Israeli [14], Italian [12], and Arabic [22] contexts. Other researchers have also added another measuring instrument, such as the Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI) [12,14], Obsessiveness Content Scale (OBS) [25], ultrasonography of the median nerve, Phalen's test, and reverse Phalen's test [61], FOMO Scale [15], UCLA Loneliness Scale (ULS-8), Self-Happiness Scale and Rosenberg' Self-Esteem Scale [26], Stress Scale Social Threat Scale [11], Brief Symptom Inventory [12], Mobile Phone Involvement Questionnaire (MPIQ) [35], Scale of Experiences in Close Relationships (ECR) and Scale of Attention Awareness Mindful-Warning (MAAS) [39], Mindful-Awareness Scale (MAAS) [58], Individualism-Collectivism (INDCOL) [63], Problematic Internet Use Scale (PIUS), Social Appearance Anxiety Scale (SAAS) and Social media use integration scale [37], Emotional Intelli...…”

“…Nomophobia promotes the development of mental disorders, personality disorders [25], as well as problems in people's self-esteem, loneliness, and happiness [26], especially in the younger population [27,28]. All of this has a great impact on health, which has negative repercussions on other aspects of life such as study and work [29], by creating a strong dependence on mobile technology [30], affecting professional practice by provoking constant distractions [31].…”