The German Version of the Internet Addiction Test: A Validation Study

Abstract

Reports about excessive Internet use, possibly amounting to an addiction, have increased. Progress with research and treatment of this phenomenon requires valid standardized assessment instruments. A frequently used questionnaire is the Internet Addiction Test (IAT) by Kimberly Young. The 20-item questionnaire is well established in a number of languages, but a German validation was lacking so far. An online (ON) sample (n=1,041, age 24.2±7.2 years, 46.7 percent men) completed an Internet version of the IAT and a student sample (offline [OF] sample, n=841, age: 23.5±3.0 years, 46.8 percent men) filled in a paper/pencil version. The participants also answered questions regarding their Internet use habits. A further sample of 108 students (21.5±2.0 years, 25.7 percent men) completed the questionnaire twice to determine the 14-day retest reliability. The internal consistencies were α=0.91 (ON) and α=0.89 (OF). Item-whole correlations ranged from r=0.23 to r=0.65 (ON) and from r=0.30 to r=0.64 (OF). Two-week retest reliability was r(tt)=0.83. Factor analyses with Varimax rotation yielded the same two factors in both samples, which explained 46.7 percent (ON) and 42.0 percent (OF) of the variance. The IAT score correlated with the time spent in the Internet in a typical week (ON: r=0.44; OF: r=0.38). The German version of the IAT was shown to have good psychometric properties and a stable two-factorial structure. Correlations with online time were in line with those reported for the IAT in other languages.

Simple construct evaluation with latent class analysis: An investigation of Facebook addiction and the development of a short form of the Facebook Addiction Test (F-AT)

“…Using factor analysis and promax rotation, we found the same two-factor structure that Barke et al (2012) had found for Internet addiction. Therefore, we used their factor labels by adapting them to the context of Facebook addiction.…”

“…In a first step, we replicated the structure of two correlated factors found by Barke et al (2012) for the I-AT. For this reason, we argue that the Facebook addiction construct is comparable to the Internet addiction construct, only that the former is narrower, applying to the specific context of Facebook, whereas the latter is broader, applying to the Internet in general.…”

“…A factor analysis using promax rotation and two fixed factors was estimated, to investigate in how far the two-factorial structure of the I-AT that has been found in other research (Barke et al, 2012;Korkeila et al, 2010) could be confirmed for the F-AT we used. In addition, LCAs with one to six classes were estimated using the R (R Development Core Team, 2014) package poLCA (Linzer & Lewis, 2011).…”

Internet Addiction: A Systematic Review of Epidemiological Research for the Last Decade

“…In six studies, Young's Internet Addiction Test [35] was used to assess Internet addiction in adults [89][90][91][92][93][94]. The sample sizes ranged from 1,034 young adults in Turkey [90] to 13,588 Internet users in Korea [93].…”

The Short French Internet Addiction Test Adapted to Online Sexual Activities: Validation and Links With Online Sexual Preferences and Addiction Symptoms

“…On the whole, existing validation studies performed on the IAT showed a six-factor solution (Widyanto & McMurran, 2004), a three-factor solution (Chang & Law, 2008), a two-factor solution (Barke, Nyenhuis, & Kröner-Herwig, 2012;Faraci, Craparo, Messina, & Severino, 2013;Jelenchick, Becker, & Moreno, 2012;Korkeila, Kaarlas, Jääskeläinen, Vahlberg, & Taiminen, 2010;Watters, Keefer, Kloosterman, Summerfeldt, & Parker, 2013), or a one-factor solution (Faraci et al, 2013;Khazaal et al, 2008;Korkeila, Kaarlas, Jääskeläinen, Vahlberg, & Taiminen, 2010). The heterogeneity of these results can be attributed to the fact that many studies used this scale in various settings with a diversity of participants (e.g., different ages, nationalities; Faraci et al, 2013).…”