ArticleJournal of behavioral addictions2026
The Problematic Behaviour Scale (PBS-5): A brief measure for the population-level screening of non-substance-bound addictive behaviours and Swiss national prevalence rates.
Article in Journal of behavioral addictions, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
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Abstract
Background and aims: The Assessment of Criteria for Specific Internet-use Disorders (ACSID-11; Müller et al. 2022) offers a promising instrument to screen addictive disorders in population-wide surveys based on ICD-11 criteria. We evaluated this scale in the Swiss context and propose the shorter Problematic Behaviour Scale (PBS-5). Methods: We included ACSID-11 in the Swiss survey "Health and Lifestyle" (SHL) 2023 (n = 5,995) in German, French and Italian for social media use, shopping, gaming, gambling, and pornography use. We assessed psychometric characteristics of PBS-5. Classification quality and cut-off values of PBS-5 for prevalences of problematic behaviour were determined by multiple Receiver Operator Characteristic regressions of the Patient Health Questionnaire-4 (PHQ-4) on PBS-5. Including PBS-5 and PHQ-4 in the SHL 2025 (n = 5,818) allowed to investigate trends and the intertemporal stability of the cut-off values. Results: PBS-5 showed a one-dimensional factorial structure, and excellent internal consistency. External validity and classification quality was limited. Prevalence rates of problematic behaviours as a percentage of regular users in Switzerland in 2025 were: social media use: 27.7%, shopping: 13.6%, gaming: 21.0%, gambling: 2.5%, pornography use: 22.2%. Since 2023, these prevalences have increased except for gambling. Problematic social media use peaked among young women and gaming among young men. Problematic gaming, and pornography use were more frequent among men. Problematic shopping was observed more frequently among subjects with low education. Discussion and conclusions: PBS-5 is a promising brief screening tool for addictive behaviours. Further validation is recommended.
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