The Psychometric Properties of the Social Networking Sites (SNS) Addiction Scale among Omani Youth

Abstract

The current study aimed at investigating the psychometric properties of the SNS addiction scale. The scale was applied to a random sample of 2507 students 868 males, 1639 females from public and private universities and colleges in Oman. First, the indicators of the validity was verified by presenting the scale to the arbitrators. Then the exploratory factor analysis was conducted. It revealed three main factors: emergence and relapse, endurance and conflict, moodiness and withdrawal. The factors explained 59.6% of the total variance. Then, corrected correlation coefficients for the association of each item with its dimension were calculated. They ranged from 0.71 to 0.44. The concurrent validity was applied using Nomophobia Questionnaire. The correlation coefficient between the two measures was 0.70. Second, reliability of the scale was verified using Cronbach alpha coefficient for the scale as a whole and its three dimensions (0.92, 0.85, 0.81, and 0.81 respectively). Moreover, Guttman split-half coefficient was calculated, which reached 0.87.