Development, validity and reliability of a general adiction scale. A preliminary study

Abstract

Introduction: The authors develop a General Scale to measure the intensity of the addiction to substances (not alcohol, not opiates) and addictive behaviors.

Methods: The General Scale is a self-scale compound by eleven ítems that was delivered to fifty and five students of the courses 5º and 6º of the Medicine of the University of Alcalá (Madrid, Spain), and was them requested that applied said scale from different supposed addictive: tobacco; tea, coffee or cola drinks; chocolate; others sweet; alcohol; sex; use of the pesonal computer and/or Internet and/or videoplay; and to practice sports. Of that manner, each subject provided a total of 440 complimented scales.Finally, it was requested the subjects that indicated in a scale apart, their degree of addiction from the different exposed concepts. Those data served of external criterion.

Results and discussion: The Scale is monodimensional, and shows a high construct validity (account 63% of the total variance obtained by a Factorial Analysis), a high alpha reliability (α: 0.94) and a good internal consistency (split-half method with the Spearman-Brown correction; R: 0.92). All items share with the general addiction concept that represents the total score of the Scale, an common variance proportion equal or over the 52%.

Conclusion. The Scale seems be a valid and reliable instrument to compare groups of the calls «new addictions» of a measurable manner.