Online Game Addiction in a Sample from Turkey: Development and Validation of the Turkish Version of Game Addiction Scale

Abstract

Objective: Online game addiction also referred to as internet gaming disorder, a clinical condition that is not well-established, is not listed in psychiatric classification systems due to lack of adequate studies but expected to be added to the manual in near future. In Turkey neither a scale nor a study is present to evaluate online game addiction/ addicts. We aimed to evaluate the reliability and validity of “The Game Addiction Scale” that was developed by Lemmens in 2009 as an instrument to assess online game addiction in an online game players sample in Turkey and examine the game addiction levels in these players. Methods: For this purpose 726 “Travian” (a massively multiplayer online game) players were evaluated with the Young’s Internet Addiction Test and the Lemmens’s Game Addiction Scale to find out their game addiction levels. Individual properties of the participants reflecting their internet use and gaming habits were also examined. The study was performed using SurveyMonkey within three months between March 1 and May 31, 2013. Results: Both 21-item (Cronbach’s α=0.96) and 7-item versions (Cronbach’s α=0.88) of the Game Addiction Scale were found to be valid and reliable. Also using the monothetic format 11.1% of the participants was found to be online game addicts. Conclusion: Our findings indicates that there is a considerably high percentage of game addiction within this online gamers sample compared to other countries. Further studies with online gamers and general population are needed to see the whole picture in Turkey.