Reliability and validity of the Game Addiction Scale in Malaysian Adolescents

Problematic gaming behavior has been an issue in many countries, raising the need for assessment tools. The Game Addiction Scale for Adolescents (GASA) by Lemmens et al. is widely used for assessing game addiction and has been adopted for use in various countries. The GASA consists of 21 items covering several criteria of game addiction: salience, tolerance, mood modification, relapse, withdrawal, conflict, and problems. The present study aimed to investigate the reliability and validity of the GASA when applied to Malaysian adolescents.

The study was conducted in two phases (reliability assessment for phase 1 and validity assessment for phase 2). The Malay version of the Game Addiction Scale was created using a forward-translation procedure with the help of panelists consisting of researchers and educators from the fields of Psychology, Medicine, and Education to translate from English to Malay. The participants of the study were presented with both versions (Malay and English) during the data collection process. The study checked content validity with the help of 33 panelists and reliability based on the scores of 116 participants who spent at least 1 h and up to 6 h per week playing games.

The reliability was measured using Cronbach's alpha and provided high reliability ranging from 0.671 to 0.903 for all criteria. All criteria scored higher than 0.8 except for relapse (α=0.788) and problems (α=0.671) criteria, indicating that the instrument provides high reliability. The findings from the study show acceptable content validity with high I-CVI values ranging from 0.73 to 0.94 and an S-CVI/Ave value of 0.80. Internal consistency was excellent (α=0.949) and the Content Validity Index (I-CVI) was high for most items.

The results suggest that GASA is suitable for application among adolescents in Malaysia.