Abstract

PURPOSE
This study was done to develop a cell phone addiction scale for Korean children.
METHODS
The process included construction of a conceptual framework, generation of initial items, verification of content validity, selection of secondary items, preliminary study, and extraction of final items. The participants were 268 children from grades 4 to 6 in two urban elementary schools. Construct validity, internal consistence reliability, and split-half reliability were used to analyze the data.
RESULTS
Nine items were categorized into 2 factors explaining 61.29% of total variance. The factors were labeled as obsessive compulsion (6 items) and dependency (3 items). Cronbach's alpha coefficient for the 9 items was .87, and Spearman-Brown coefficient was .83. Scale scores identified children as high risk users, at risk users, or average users by standard scores.
CONCLUSION
The above findings indicate that the cell phone addiction scale for children has good validity and reliability when used with Korean children.

• Keywords: Children;Cell phone;Addictive behavior