Polish adaptation and validation of the Smartphone Orientation Scale (SOS)

Abstract

Objectives The intensive use of mobile devices has been the research subject in many countries and cultures for several years. The main emphasis is usually focused on negative phenomena, ranging from problematic or excessive use to addiction to a mobile phone or smartphone. Simultaneously scales are also being developed to measure users' general orientation to the smartphone. One such tool is Smartphone Orientation Scale (SOS) by James A. Roberts and Meredith E. David. Material and methods The Smartphone Orientation Scale has been translated into Polish in accordance with the principle of linguistic equivalence. The research was conducted on a sample of 725 students (71% women) aged 18–50 from several universities in Poland. The assessment of the structure of Smartphone Orientation Scale was performed using CFA with the generalized least squares (GLS) estimator. The reliability of SOS was measured using Cronbach's α, McDonald's ω and temporal stability. Criterion validity was assessed by correlation with Mobile Phone Problem Use Scale (MPPUS-9), Depression, Anxiety, Stress Scale (DASS-21) and The Scale of Excessive Use of Social Networking Sites (SONKSS-16). Results CFA showed favourable goodness-of-fit values, similar to the original version of SOS scale. The statistical analysis proved high statistically significant coefficients of the discriminatory power of SOS. As expected, a high statistically significant correlation exists between SOS and problematic mobile phone use and excessive social media activity. Conclusions The adaptation study demonstrates that the Polish version of SOS has good psychometric properties and can be used in scientific and diagnostic research due to its enormous potential thanks to developed standards.

Keywords

• addiction
• validation
• smartphone
• mobile devices
• adaptation scale
• sos
• smartphone orientation