Subpopulations of Addictive Behaviors in Different Sample Types and Their Relationships with Gender, Personality, and Well-Being: Latent Profile vs. Latent Class Analysis

Abstract

Background: Relatively strong theoretical assumptions and previous studies concerning co-occurring addictive behaviors suggest a subpopulation representing general proclivity to behavioral addictions (BAs), and there are gender-specific subpopulations. This study aimed to compare latent profile analysis (LPA) and latent class analysis (LCA) as the methods of investigating different clusters of BAs in the general student population and among students positively screened for at least one BA. Participants and procedure: Analyses of six BAs (study, shopping, gaming, Facebook, pornography, and food) and their potential antecedents (personality) and consequences (well-being) were conducted on a full sample of Polish undergraduate students (N = 1182) and a subsample (n = 327) of students including individuals fulfilling cutoff for at least one BA. Results: LPA on the subsample mostly replicated the previous four profiles found in the full sample. However, LCA on a full sample did not replicate previous findings using LPA and showed only two classes: those with relatively high probabilities on all BAs and low probabilities. LCA on the subsample conflated profiles identified with LPA and classes found with LCA in the full sample. Conclusions: LCA on dichotomized scores (screened positively vs. negatively) were less effective in identifying clear patterns of interrelationships between BAs based on relatively strong theoretical assumptions and found in previous research. BAs can be investigated on the whole spectrum of behavior, and person-centered analyses might be more useful when they are based on continuous scores. This paper provides more detailed analyses of the four basic clusters of BAs, prevalence, and co-occurrence of particular BAs within and between them, their gender and personality risk factors, relationships to well-being, and their interrelationships as emerging from the results of this and previous studies.

Compulsive Study Behaviors Are Associated with Eating Disorders and Have Independent Negative Effects on Well-Being: A Structural Equation Model Study among Young Musicians

“…Family functioning, including critical and controlling parents, and family discord may contribute to both classes of psychopathology. Moreover, personality traits conducive to these behavioral patterns are shared in EDs and study addiction, including rigid perfectionism, narcissism, competitiveness, and general emotional instability [13,14,18,25,26,64].…”

“…Similar to work addiction, study addiction shows comorbidities with a host of other mental health problems, including substantial co-occurrences with other addictive behaviors [25,26], depression, anxiety, and social anxiety [14,24,27]. Following previous findings on the association between compulsive working and food-starving and food-binging behaviors [28][29][30], a recent study showed considerable comorbidity between work addiction and EDs [13].…”

“…It provides a theoretical framework by which to understand the current conceptualization of study addiction within the existing classifications of diseases and disorders, and the work addiction framework within the behavioral addiction field of research. Study addiction is relatively highly prevalent (from 6 to 17% depending on country and course of study; [14,24]) in comparison to other addictive and compulsive behaviors, and it closely parallels the work addiction prevalence (for comparisons and analyses of prevalence rates, see [25]). Work and study addictions are related to considerable harm to the individual and society.…”

“…However, the low prevalence of anorexia nervosa or bulimia nervosa makes it challenging to investigate the more nuanced aspects of their relationship with work-related compulsive behaviors and well-being. Addictive behaviors can be effectively studied as continuous phenomena and such an approach provides considerable advantages, especially in terms of statistical power and the more precise estimation of addiction risk or level [25,26]. Therefore, continuous scores on EDs were used in the current study to allow for more advanced analyses of the relationships between them and study addiction.…”

The Modified Yale Food Addiction Scale May Be Simplified and Diagnostically Improved: The Same Prevalence but Different Severity and Risk Factors of Food Addiction among Female and Male Students

“…Addiction can be measured as a continuous phenomenon representing a spectrum, and such an approach to measurement was demonstrated to show advantageous properties for the analytical investigation of addictive behaviors [ 56 ]. Most importantly, it enables capturing nuanced differences in addiction risk and its severity (see [ 57 ] for a detailed discussion on the dichotomization of measurement and its consequences in the addiction field).…”