ArticleComprehensive psychiatry2023
Internet severity and activities addiction questionnaire (ISAAQ): Psychometrics of item response theory and clustering of online activities.
Article in Comprehensive psychiatry, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
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5 citing papers in PubMed.
- Problematic usage of the internet is associated with orthorexia nervosa tendency in adults.CNS spectrums · 2025Article
- Development and validation of the reported outcome scale for patients with lumbar disc herniation.Annals of medicine · 2025Article
- Q-single: Linking functional impairment to problematic internet use through a single-question approach.Journal of behavioral addictions · 2025Article
- Self-compassion as a protective factor against adverse consequences of social media use: A scoping review.PloS one · 2025Article
- Recent advances in understanding how compulsivity is related to behavioural addictions over their timecourse.Current addiction reports · 2025Review
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8 authors.
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Abstract
backgroundProblematic usage of the internet (PUI) is an umbrella term, referring to a variety of maladaptive online behaviors linked to functional impairment. There is ongoing need for the development of instruments capturing not only PUI severity, but also the online activity types. The Internet Severity and Activities Questionnaire (ISAAQ), previously developed to address this need, required further refinement and validation.
methodsCross-sectional data was gathered in two separate samples (South Africa n = 3275, USA-UK n = 943) using the Internet Severity and Activities Addiction Questionnaire (ISAAQ). Item Response Theory (IRT) was used to examine the properties of the scale (Part A of the ISAAQ) and differential item functioning against demographic parameters. The severity scale of the ISAAQ was optimized by eliminating the poorest performing items using an iterative approach and examining validity metrics. Cluster analyses was used to examine internet activities and commonalities across samples (Part B of the ISAAQ).
resultsOptimization of ISAAQ using IRT yielded a refined 10-item version (ISAAQ-10), with less differential item functioning and a robust unidimensional factor structure. The ISAAQ-10 severity score correlated strongly with established measures of internet addiction (Compulsive Internet Use Scale [Person's r = 0.86] and the Internet Addiction Test-10 [r = 0.75]). Combined with gaming activity score it correlated moderately strongly with the established Internet Gaming Disorder Test (r = 0.65). Exploratory cluster analyses in both samples identified two groups, one of "low-PUI" [98.1-98.5%], and one of "high-PUI" [1.5-1.9%]. Multiple facets of internet activity appeared elevated in the high-PUI cluster. DISCUSSION: The ISAAQ-10 supersedes the earlier longer version of the ISAAQ, and provides a useful, psychometrically robust measure of PUI severity (Part A), and captures the extent of engagement in a wide gamut of online specific internet activities (Part B). ISAAQ-10 constitutes a valuable objective measurement tool for future studies.
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