Validity of the Internet Addiction Test for Adolescents and Older Children (IAT-A)

Following the call to ensure the validity of instruments used to assess users’ level of Internet usage, this study examined the factor structure of the Internet Addiction Test–Adolescence version (IAT-A) when applied to a sample of young children in a multicultural society and assessed whether the items in the IAT-A were invariant by gender and, if the factor mean scores were significantly different by gender. IAT-A is a revised version from the original IAT, with very minor changes in item wordings for the use of adolescence and older children population. A total of 325 primary and secondary students (140 males and 185 females) participated in this study. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses generated three factors (Loss of Control, Dereliction of Duty, and Excessive Use), all of which were subsumed under a second-order factor of overall Internet addiction. The results also revealed that the factor loadings of IAT-A were invariant by gender and although males had higher factor mean scores than females, these were very small. Future studies to enhance the usability of the IAT and IAT-A are discussed