The Effect of Conscientiousness as Personality Trait and Gender on Digital Game Addiction in High School Students

Abstract

This study aims to investigate the effect of conscientiousness and gender on digital game addiction in high school students. This study has been conducted to 470 students from three vocational schools and four common high schools in Siirt in 2017-2018 academic year through a relational survey method. In this research, conscientiousness sub-dimension of The Big Five Inventory and Digital Game Addiction scale have been used. It has also been determined that conscientiousness and gender are significant predictors of digital game addiction, and both of the variables are able to explain approximately 12% of digital game addiction. Depending on this, this study has attempted to observe low level conscientiousness and gender (in case of being male) affect digital game addiction negatively in high school students. In addition to this, it has aimed to show that gender and low conscientiousness are the possible risk factors for students in term of digital game addiction. For this reason, the students’ traits of conscientiousness, particularly of male students, must be developed. Sense of responsibility is related to conscientiousness. Therefore, the traits of conscientiousness might be developed by enhancing the adolescents’ sense of responsibility, and hence some positive outcomes can be acquired against the digital game addiction.