Validation study of the Core Beliefs about Behavioral Addictions and Internet Addiction Questionnaire (CBBAIAQ)

Abstract

The present study involves the construct and validation of the Core Beliefs about Behavioral Addictions and Internet Addiction Questionnaire (CBBAIAQ), on a French non-specific population. Development of the questionnaire was divided into three steps: creation of items based on semi-structured interviews, conduction of an Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) to elaborate the structure of the questionnaire on a first sample of 458 participants, and assessment of internal structure by performing a Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) on a second sample of 544 participants. Data was collected through online surveys. Both samples were evaluated for problematic Internet use (PIU) (IAT; Young, 1998) and problematic Facebook use (PFU) (BFAS; Andreassen, Torsheim, Brunborg, & Pallesen, 2012) for testing correlations with CBBAIAQ factors. EFA, performed on the 91 created items, identified a 3-factor solution composed of 41 items. CFA, performed on the 41 remaining items, revealed a more significant 6-factor model of 23 items. Factor 2, 4, and 6 were significantly negatively correlated with PIU (r ​= ​−0.09, r ​= ​−0.11, r ​= ​−0.09). Psychometric properties of the CBBAIAQ (X2 ​= ​406; p ​< ​.001; CFI ​= ​0.94; TLI ​= ​0.93; SRMR ​= ​0.05; RMSEA ​= ​0.04) and internal coherence (from α ​= ​0.67 to α ​= ​0.85) were good. The CBBAIAQ can be exploited in future research to explore relations between core beliefs and other variables.

Keywords

• Behavioral addiction
• Internet addiction
• Problematic internet use
• Core beliefs
• Social representations
• Social media addiction