Assessing Instagram Use Across Cultures: A Confirmatory Factor Analysis

Area of Science:

• Psychology
• Social Media Research
• Cultural Psychology

Background:

• The Instagram and Well-Being Questionnaire (IWBQ) measures social media use.
• Item 14 of the IWBQ assesses reasons for Instagram use.
• Prior Australian research identified three factors: sense of belonging, self-expression, and documentation/curation.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the goodness of fit for the Australian three-factor structure of Instagram use reasons in a US undergraduate sample.
• To explore potential sociocultural confounds, specifically racial identity, on the factor structure.

Main Methods:

• Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was performed on data from 520 US undergraduate students.
• Mplus 8.1 software and the mean and variance-adjusted weighted least squares method were utilized.
• Exploratory analyses examined model fit after partitioning the sample by racial identity (African American and Caucasian).

Main Results:

• The proposed three-factor model demonstrated poor fit to the US data, failing to meet criteria for exact or approximate model fit.
• Subsequent analyses partitioning the sample by racial identity also showed inadequate model fit.
• Statistical indicators (χ², RMSEA, CFI, TLI) confirmed the lack of model fit.

Conclusions:

• The established three-factor model for Instagram use reasons may not be universally applicable across different cultural contexts.
• Sociocultural factors, including race, might influence the underlying structure of motivations for using Instagram.
• Further research is needed to explore cross-cultural variations in Instagram usage motivations.