ArticleJournal of behavioral addictions2015
Commentary on: Are we overpathologizing everyday life? A tenable blueprint for behavioral addiction research. The diagnostic pitfalls of surveys: If you score positive on a test of addiction, you still have a good chance not to be addicted.
Article in Journal of behavioral addictions, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 38 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
38 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 80 citations in OpenAlex.
- Treatments of internet gaming disorder: a systematic review of the evidence.Expert review of neurotherapeutics · 2020Pooled it
- The Semi-Structured Clinical Interview for the Assessment of Compulsive Sexual Behavior (SSCI-CSB): Development, Reliability, and Validity.Journal of clinical psychology · 2026Article
- Compulsive sexual behavior disorder (CSBD) and problematic pornography use (PPU): A comprehensive, interdisciplinary, and expert-informed narrative review with suggested future directions.Journal of behavioral addictions · 2026Review
- Early detection of problematic internet use among university students: psychometric validation of the PIUQ-9.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- The seven deadly sins: measuring overvaluation of social media with the Plan-net 25 scale.BMC psychology · 2025Article
- Article
- Thinking beyond cut-off scores in the assessment of potentially addictive behaviors: A brief illustration in the context of binge-watching.Journal of behavioral addictions · 2023Review
- A Systematic Review of Structural and Functional MRI Studies Investigating Social Networking Site Use.Brain sciences · 2023Review
- The Brief Alcohol Use Disorder Severity Scale: An Initial Validation Evaluation.Alcohol and alcoholism (Oxford, Oxfordshire) · 2022Article
- A mixed-methods study of problematic social media use, attention dysregulation, and social media use motives.Current psychology (New Brunswick, N.J.) · 2022Article
- Prevalence of problematic Internet use during the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic.Current opinion in behavioral sciences · 2022Review
- Gaming Disorder in Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder.Journal of autism and developmental disorders · 2022Article
- The role of microtransactions in Internet Gaming Disorder and Gambling Disorder: A preregistered systematic review.Addictive behaviors reports · 2022Article
- Subpopulations of Addictive Behaviors in Different Sample Types and Their Relationships with Gender, Personality, and Well-Being: Latent Profile vs. Latent Class Analysis.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2021Article
- Absence of Objective Differences between Self-Identified Addicted and Healthy Smartphone Users?International journal of environmental research and public health · 2021Article
- Identifying individuals in need of help for their uncontrolled gaming: A narrative review of concerns and comments regarding gaming disorder diagnostic criteria.Journal of behavioral addictions · 2020Review
- The effects of parental control and warmth on problematic internet use in adolescents: A prospective cohort study.Journal of behavioral addictions · 2020Article
- Laxer Clinical Criteria for Gaming Disorder May Hinder Future Efforts to Devise an Efficient Diagnostic Approach: A Tree-Based Model Study.Journal of clinical medicine · 2019Article
- Development of a short form of the compulsive internet use scale in Switzerland.International journal of methods in psychiatric research · 2019Article
- A clinical evaluation of the DSM-5 criteria for Internet Gaming Disorder and a pilot study on their applicability to further Internet-related disorders.Journal of behavioral addictions · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
- Comment on
Authors and funding
3 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
BACKGROUND AND
aimsSurvey-based studies often fail to take into account the predictive value of a test, in other words, the probability of a person having (or not having) the disease when scoring positive (or negative) on the given screening test.
methodsWe re-visited the theory and basic calculations of diagnostic accuracy.
resultsIn general, the lower the prevalence the worse the predictive value is. When the disorder is relatively rare, a positive test finding is typically not useful in confirming its presence given the high proportion of false positive cases. For example, using the Compulsive Buying Scale (Faber & O'Guinn, 1992) three in four people classified as having compulsive buying disorder will in fact not have the disorder.
conclusionsScreening tests are limited to serve as an early detection "gate" and only clinical (interview-based) studies are suitable to claim that a certain behaviour is truly "pathological".
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.