The Development of a Measuring Instrument for Substance Abuse Media Literacy Scale in Students

Objective: Substance Abuse Media Literacy (SAML) is a scale for assessing substance abuse media literacy among students. This tool can examine the effect of media exposure on substance abuse in youth. Presently, no validated, comprehensive instrument exists to measure media literacy for substance abuse. The current study aimed at assessing the psychometric features of the SAML scale in students. Methods: In this cross-sectional validation work, 436 students from Hamadan, Iran, were sampled via the stratified random sampling procedure, and their media literacy regarding substance abuse was investigated. Reliability was assessed by the intraclass correlation coefficient and internal consistency. Moreover, exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis were conducted to examine the construct validity. Content Validity Index and Content Validity Ratio were used to examine the content validity. Results: Based on the results of factor analysis, the SAML included 13 items that measure 4 components, explaining 63.99% of the usual variance. The means scores for the Content Validity Index and Content Validity Ratio were 0.93 and 0.82, respectively. Further analyses revealed the acceptability of the results for internal consistency reliability values with a Cronbach α of 0.80. Conclusion: Based on factor analysis results, the SAML included 13 items is a valid and reliable tool and is now suitable and acceptable for present and future studies.