Content Validity and Test-Retest Reliability of a Questionnaire to Measure Virtual Social Network Addiction Among University Students

Addiction to virtual social networks (VSNs), especially among students, has become a crisis during the recent years.

This study aimed to assess the validity and reliability of a questionnaire on VSN addiction among Iranian university students.

The initial questionnaire was designed based on extensive literature review and consulting with experts. To measure the item and content validity indexes (I-CVI and S-CVI) and to measure the content validity ratio (CVR), a panel of 24 experts reviewed the questionnaire. To measure the test-retest reliability, the questionnaire was administered on 30 students within the interval of 14 - 21 days and the intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC) was calculated. Cronbach’s alpha and the corrected item-total correlation were calculated to measure internal consistency. All analysis was done using SPSS 20 software.

All items had satisfactory CVR and I-CVI. The S-CVI was 0.98. The value of Cronbach’s alpha was 0.88. The corrected item-total correlation for all items, except one, was in acceptable range. This item was removed from the final questionnaire. The test-retest reliability of the questionnaire was almost perfect (ICC = 0.9).

The current study provides a valid and reliable questionnaire to measure VSN addiction among university students. The designed instrument could be used in addiction evaluation studies.