ArticleJMIR formative research2021
Development of the 12-Item Social Media Disinformation Scale and its Association With Social Media Addiction and Mental Health Related to COVID-19 in Tunisia: Survey-Based Pilot Case Study.
Article in JMIR formative research, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers.
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Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed, 24 citations in OpenAlex.
- Beliefs in Misinformation About COVID-19 and the Russian Invasion of Ukraine Are Linked: Evidence From a Nationally Representative Survey Study.JMIR infodemiology · 2025Article
- Problematic social media use is associated with believing in and engaging with fake news.PloS one · 2025Article
- Article
- Psychometric Evidence of the Arabic Version of Nomophobia Questionnaire Among Physical Education Students.Psychology research and behavior management · 2023Article
- Problematic use of the Internet in low- and middle-income countries before and during the COVID-19 pandemic: a scoping review.Current opinion in behavioral sciences · 2022Article
- Infodemic and fake news - A comprehensive overview of its global magnitude during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021: A scoping review.International journal of disaster risk reduction : IJDRR · 2022Article
- Perceived Information Distortion about COVID-19 Vaccination and Addictive Social Media Use among Social Media Users in Hong Kong: The Moderating Roles of Functional Literacy and Critical Literacy.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Article
- Latent Profile Analysis to Survey Positive Mental Health and Well-Being: A Pilot Investigation Insight Tunisian Facebook Users.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2022Article
- Article
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Authors and funding
8 authors at 4 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundIn recent years, online disinformation has increased. Fake news has been spreading about the COVID-19 pandemic. Since January 2020, the culprits and antidotes to disinformation have been digital media and social media.
objectiveOur study aimed to develop and test the psychometric properties of the 12-item Social Media Disinformation Scale (SMDS-12), which assesses the consumption, confidence, and sharing of information related to COVID-19 by social media users.
methodsA total of 874 subjects were recruited over two phases: the exploratory phase group had a mean age of 28.39 years (SD 9.32) and the confirmatory phase group had a mean age of 32.84 years (SD 12.72). Participants completed the SMDS-12, the Internet Addiction Test, the COVID-19 Fear Scale, and the 10-item Perceived Stress Scale. The SMDS-12 was initially tested by exploratory factor analysis and was subsequently tested by confirmatory factor analysis.
resultsThe test supported the three-factor structure. In addition, no items were removed from the measurement scale, with three factors explaining up to 73.72% of the total variance, and the items had a lambda factor loading ranging from 0.73 to 0.85. Subsequently, confirmatory factor analysis confirmed the robustness of the measure by referring to a wide range of goodness-of-fit indices that met the recommended standards. The construct validity of the scale was supported by its convergent and discriminant validity. The reliability of the instrument examined by means of three internal consistency indices, and the corrected item-total correlation, demonstrated that the three dimensions of the instrument were reliable: Cronbach α values were .89, .88, and .88 for the consumption, confidence, and sharing subscales, respectively. The corrected item-total correlation ranged from 0.70 to 0.78. The correlation of the instrument's dimensions with internet addiction and mental health factors showed positive associations.
conclusionsThe SMDS-12 can be reliably utilized to measure the credibility of social media disinformation and can be adapted to measure the credibility of disinformation in other contexts.
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