Factor structure of ten psychoactive substance addictions and behavioural addictions

Co-occurrence of Common Biological and Behavioral Addictions: Using Network Analysis to Identify Central Addictions and Their Associations with Each Other

“…Fifth, our finding indicates that exercise, other behavioral addictions (sex, social media, shopping, gambling, internet gaming, and internet use), and substance-use addictions (alcohol, cigarette smoking, and drugs (undifferentiated)) were clustered together in different sections, suggesting that the ten addictions in the model can be grouped into three groups: substance-use addictions, behavioral addictions not including exercise, and exercise by itself. This is consistent with the findings reported by Gomez et al (2022) for the same group of participants and addictions as in the current study.…”

“…As applied to the co-occurrence of different addictions, a latent variable model generally assumes the existence of a general addiction factor (unobservable) that causes a range of addictions. For a large group of adults involving half the sample of participants as in the current study, Gomez et al (2022) used exploratory factor analysis (EFA) to examine the factor structure of a model with three psychoactive substance addictions (alcohol use, cigarette smoking, and substance use) and seven behavioral addictions (sex, social media use, shopping, exercise, online gambling, internet gaming, and internet use). The findings supported a two-factor model, with different factors for the psychoactive substance and behavioral addictions (excluding exercise addiction).…”

“…Despite the current wide use of network analysis for extending our understanding of many clinical disorders, to date, the network approach has not been used for understanding co-occurring addictions. This was examined in the current study for the same group of participants and the same set of common addictions (alcohol, cigarette smoking, drug, sex, social media, shopping, exercise, gambling, internet gaming, and internet use addictions) as in our previous study, cited earlier (Gomez et al, 2022). Using the same participants and addictions was considered advantageous as this could allow a comparison of the current network findings with the previous factor analysis findings that are not confounded by the participants, questionnaire, and procedural differences.…”

Social media use and abuse: Different profiles of users and their associations with addictive behaviours

“…Firstly, no distinction was found between the so called “technological” and other behavioral addictions, potentially contradicting prior theory on the topic ( Gomez et al, 2022 ). Typically, the abuse of internet gaming/pornography/social media, has been classified as behavioral addiction ( Enrique, 2010 , Savci and Aysan, 2017 ).…”

Problematic Shopping Behavior: An Item Response Theory Examination of the Seven-Item Bergen Shopping Addiction Scale

“…Many terms have been used to describe PSB (e.g., “compulsive buying,” “compulsive spending,” “shopping addiction,” “shopaholism,” “problematic shopping”) suggesting that such problematic behaviors are associated with an inability to regulate emotions and/or excessive impulsivity (Christenson et al, 1994 ). However, recent research suggests that much like psychoactive substance addictions, PSB, and other problematic behaviors are best understood from an addiction perspective, given that internal factors (e.g., distress) and external factors (e.g., environmental cues) precipitate cue reactivity providing the basis for craving and anticipation of rewards (Gomez et al, 2022 ; Starcke et al, 2018 ).…”