Measuring Zoom Fatigue in College Students: Development and Validation of the Meeting Fatigue Scale for Videoconferencing (MFS-V) and the Meeting Fatigue Scale for In-Person (MFS-I)

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic saw a significant growth in the usage of videoconferencing platforms such as Zoom in academia – accompanied by greater reports of exhaustion and burnout associated with extensive video meetings from college students. Given that videoconferencing adoption will likely persist, it is critical to develop a psychometrically sound tool for the measurement of "Zoom fatigue.” However, current measures for Zoom fatigue fail to control for similarities to in-person meeting fatigue. Thus, we designed and validated a scale to measure Zoom fatigue, the Meeting Fatigue Scale for Videoconferencing (MFS-V) along with a companion scale to measure in-person meeting fatigue, the Meeting Fatigue Scale for In-Person (MFS-I). Exploratory factor analyses (EFA) revealed that the MFS-V and MFS-I had different factor structures, and provided evidence that Zoom fatigue is a conceptually distinct phenomenon from in-person meeting fatigue. This finding was supported by confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) that supported the fit of both factor structures. Both scales demonstrated strong reliability, convergent validity, divergent validity, and incremental validity over measures of general burnout and meeting duration and frequency. These results suggest the MFS-V and MFS-I are effective tools for assessing and understanding fatigue and burnout related to videoconferencing and in-person meeting attendance for students. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Media Psychology is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)