The appearance-related social media consciousness scale-Italian version (ASMCS-I) in young adults and adults

Abstract

Appearance-related social media consciousness (ASMC) is defined as the extent to which individuals’ thoughts and behaviors reflect ongoing awareness of whether they might look attractive to a social media audience. In this 3-study paper, we report the Italian validation of the ASMC Scale (ASMCS-I) for adult men and women. In Study 1, content validity was established through interviews (N = 110; 50 % women; M_age=30.22). Study 2 involved 144 participants (66.00 % women, M_age=36.51), with exploratory factor analysis supporting a single-factor solution consistent with the original version of the scale. In Study 3, we administered the ASMCS-I to an additional sample (N = 1008; 66.90 % women, M_age=33.29) to conduct confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) and validity analyses. The CFA supported the single-factor model with good fit indices. ASMCS-I scores demonstrated strong internal consistency, convergent and incremental validity. Convergent validity was found with correlations between the ASMCS-I and body surveillance, body shame, self-objectification, public situational self-awareness, and physical appearance comparison. Incremental validity of the ASMCS-I against body surveillance subscale (independent variables) was demonstrated with depressive and disordered eating symptoms (dependent variables). Finally, ASMCS-I is full invariant across gender and partially across age, indicating that it can be measured using the same scale for both men and women and social media users across different ages. These findings further validate the ASMCS-I as a robust instrument that accurately quantifies body image self-awareness in social media environments. It provides a measurement tool that is essential for advancing research on the psychosocial impact of digital environments on body image assessment.