Development and Validation of the Thai Version of the Problematic Smartphone Use Scale for School-age (PSU-SA) Children

Abstract

Background: Problematic smartphone use affects public health. The COVID-19 pandemic changed children's lifestyles by increasing the frequency of smartphone use. This study aims to develop and validate the Thai version of the problematic smartphone use scale for school-age (PSU-SA) children. Methods: We assessed the internal consistency and test-retest reliability of the scale with item objective congruence (IOC) and Cronbach's alpha coefficient among 30 samples recruited by purposive sampling. We measured the quality of the scale among 550 participants selected from nine schools in Nakhon Pathom, Thailand using two-stage sampling. We administered the sociodemographic questionnaire and Thai versions of the PSU-SA questionnaires for participants. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was applied to evaluate the construct validity. Results: The IOC was 0.66e1.00, providing excellent test-retest reliability (ICC ¼ 0.926, p < 0.001, 95% CI ¼ 0.844 to 0.959). The Cronbach's alpha coefficient was 0.887. The PSU-SA contained 25 items under five dimensions. Among the 550 participants, 48.5% were from females and 36.9% had a risk factor for problematic smart phone use. Results of the CFA assessing the quality of the PSU-SA included the following fit indices: c2 ¼ 505.24, df ¼ 259, c2/df ¼ 1.95, p < 0.001, comparative fit index (CFI) ¼ 0.99, goodness of fit index (GFI) ¼ 0.93, adjusted goodness of fit index (AGFI) ¼ 0.91, and root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) ¼ 0.042. Conclusion: This study demonstrates the reliability and construct validity of the PSU-SA scale for quantifying problematic smartphone use.