Psychometric Properties of Young’s Internet Addiction Test in Nigeria

Background: In 2018, the Nigerian Communication Commission affirmed that more than 100 million Nigerians made use of the Internet. A good percentage of internet usage is maladaptive. A valid, reliable, and socio-culturally sensitive assessment instrument is essential to study internet usage patterns in Nigeria. Young’s Internet Addiction test (IAT) has been validated in many countries, but not in Nigeria. Objectives: This study aimed to validate IAT to determine psychometric properties acceptable in a Nigerian population. Materials and Methods: A total of 184 Nigerian University undergraduates (77 males and 107 females), mean age = 20.5, were purposively drawn, and they responded to IAT, the Smartphone Addiction Scale-Short Version (SAS-SV), and the Bergen Facebook Addiction Scale (BFAS). Results: The Cronbach’s α of the six IAT factors ranged from 0.25 (anticipation) to 0.69 (salience). The observed overall Cronbach’s α coefficient of 0.79 was obtained for IAT. The corrected item-total correlations ranged from 0.73 to 0.84. The concurrent validity score was observed to be r = 0.54 between IAT and SAS-SV and r = 0.58 between IAT and BFAS. A significant positive correlation was equally observed between the IAT and BFAS factors, ranging from conflict (r = 0.322, P = 0.000) to relapse (r = 0.488, P = 0.000). The new norm determined for IAT in the Nigerian population was ≥ 38.5 for males and ≥ 40.8 for females. Conclusions: IAT is gender-sensitive and has acceptable psychometric properties for the Nigerian population.