Construction and characteristic of the media exhibitionism construct and the Media Exhibitionism Questionnaire

Abstract Introduction: Internet users often reveal online intimate details from their lives, such as pictures with naked parts of their bodies or posts about their emotional states. The first part of the article presents an attempt to create media exhibitionism construct based on psychopathological criteria from ICD-10. The second part of the article presents psychometric properties of the Media Exhibitionism Questionnaire. Material and methods: After extracting 49 items, based on the theoretical foundations of the media exhibitionism construct, the competent judges assessed the accuracy of individual items. This resulted in the selection of 20 statements. Then the revised questionnaire was sent to Facebook users asking them to fill it out and send it to other users of the portal. The exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was carried out by the method of main components with Varimax rotation on N=65 persons, and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was conducted on N=554 persons. Results: After EFA the questionnaire consisted of 14 items and 4 factors: physical exhibitionism, exhibitionism of narcissistic traits, emotional exhibitionism, exhibitionism of histrionic traits. The four-factor solution was adopted on the basis of theoretical assumptions. The chi2 value was significant (χ2=286.01; p<0.001), which indicated discrepancies between the observed covariance matrix and the one implied by the model. Other indicators have shown a satisfactory agreement between the data and the model. Conclusions: The questionnaire has satisfactory psychometric properties (α=0.846) and can be used to predict problem behaviours on social media, as well as in counselling regarding responsible development of self-image on the Internet.