Design and Validation of an Addiction Potential Questionnaire for Iranian Children Aged 12 to 18 Using Exploratory...

Drug addiction is one of the social and health problems worldwide. Children are the most vulnerable social stratum in the problem of addiction. The study aimed to design a questionnaire for children's addiction tendencies and study the psychometric characteristics of Iranian children.

It was a cross-sectional study that was conducted in 2023 among 400 students of Shiraz city (Iran), selected using multi-stage sampling (stratified cluster simple random). Inclusion criteria were students, residents of Shiraz city, studying in the first or second year of high school, and exclusion criteria were non-cooperation and unwillingness to participate in the study. Validity was determined through face, content, and construct validity, with exploratory factor analysis (EFA), and reliability was assessed using Cronbach's alpha and the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC). Moreover, SPSS 26 was applied for further analysis.

The average age of the participants was 15.39±1.94. The face and content validity of the scale was quantitatively and qualitatively assessed and confirmed, and the construct validity was demonstrated through EFA. The scale consists of 30 items with four factors that explain 40% of the total extracted variance. Cronbach's alpha and the ICC of the factors indicated strong to excellent reliability of the scale.

The results showed that the current questionnaire has good validity and reliability; thus, it can be applied with confidence to study the addiction tendency and screening of Iranian children aged 12 to 18 years.