Psychopathological Symptoms and Gaming Motives in Disordered Gaming—A Psychometric Comparison between the WHO and APA Diagnostic Frameworks

Abstract

Background: ‘Gaming Disorder’ (GD) has received increased medical attention and official recognition from both the American Psychiatric Association (APA) and the World Health Organization (WHO). Although these two medical organizations have independently developed promising clinical diagnostic frameworks to assess disordered gaming, little is known about how these frameworks compare at different psychometric levels in terms of producing consistent outcomes in the assessment of GD. Methods: A sample of 1429 German gamers (Meanage = 29.74 years; SD = 12.37 years) completed an online survey including measures on different psychopathological symptoms (depression, loneliness and attention problems), gaming motives and disordered gaming according to the WHO and APA frameworks. Results: The findings suggest the existence of minor discrepancies in the estimation of prevalence rates of GD according among the two frameworks. Nevertheless, both diagnostic frameworks are fairly consistent in the psychometric prediction of GD in relation to gaming motives and psychopathological symptoms. The findings underscore the role of key gaming motives as risk factors and protective factors across both diagnostic frameworks. Finally, the study provides support for the WHO diagnostic framework for GD and its measurement with the German Gaming Disorder Test (GDT). The findings and their implications are further discussed in terms of clinical relevance.

Spanish Validation of the Internet Gaming Disorder Scale–Short Form (IGDS9-SF): Prevalence and Relationship with Online Gambling and Quality of Life

“…These discrepancies may be due to the use of different psychometric tools in assessing IGD. In other studies that have utilized the IGDS9-SF, the prevalence rates of disordered gaming were reported to be between 3% to 5% [59,61]. The results of the present study fall within the prevalence rate range reported by other international studies [31].…”

“…The secondary objectives of this study were to: (a) to obtain indicators of validity and reliability of the Spanish version of IGDS9-SF, including the confirmatory study of its factor structure; (b) to test whether the newly developed psychometric test works equally in both men and women, as well as in adolescences and young adults; (c) establish the prevalence of IGD in a sample of adolescents and young Vocational Training (VT) students aged between 15 and 25 years; and (d) examine the relationship between the IGD and HRQoL. To achieve the aforementioned objective, it was hypothesized that: (i) the IGDS9-SF would show adequate psychometric properties in the sample recruited, similarly to previous IGDS9-SF psychometric validation studies conducted in different countries [58,59,61,67]; (ii) the measurement model would be invariant across both genders [57]; (iii) the prevalence of IGD would be between 2% and 4%, which is referred to in other national and international studies [27,37]; and (iv) those who met the IGD criteria within the sample recruited would present lower scores on the different HRQoL dimensions [31].…”

“…A systematic review [56] indicated the nine-item Internet Gaming Disorder Scale-Sort Form (IGDS9-SF) [57] as the most reviewed and translated instrument to assess IGD based on the nine IGD criteria developed by the APA. In fact, since its publication, the IGDS9-SF has been translated into at least nine languages: Chinese [58], German [59], Czech [60], Slovenian [61], Italian [62], Persian [63], Turkish [64,65], Polish [66], European and South American Portuguese [67,68]. Therefore, it is a cross-culturally suitable psychometric tool to assess IGD that allows framing the problem uniformly and inter-culturally with adequate psychometric properties.…”

Assessing ICD-11 Gaming Disorder in Adolescent Gamers: Development and Validation of the Gaming Disorder Scale for Adolescents (GADIS-A)

“…According to ICD-11, symptoms and disability aspects need to be present both for the diagnosis to be fulfilled. This underlines the different conceptualization and diagnostic approach of the ICD-11 compared to the DSM-5 [20]. In their recent review King and colleagues (2020) identified 32 IGD assessment tools available in the English language and employed in 320 studies [19].…”

Convergent cross-sectional and longitudinal evidence for gaming-cue specific posterior parietal dysregulations in early stages of Internet Gaming Disorder

“…The inclusion in the diagnostic classification systems takes account of the growing concerns with respect to detrimental mental health effects of excessive and in some cases compulsive engagement in Internet gaming. Prevalence estimates of Internet Gaming Disorder (IGD) range from 0.3%-27.5% worldwide 3 with a recent representative survey suggesting that 1.16% of adolescents in Germany meet the diagnostic criteria for IGD according to DSM-5 criteria 4 (prevalence estimates according to the WHO criteria see [5]). Accumulating evidence from cross-sectional .…”