Adaptation of problematic mobile phone use scale to Turkish: A validity and reliability study

This is a methodological type research that was proceeded to evaluate the validity and reliability of the Scale for the Problematic Mobile Phone Use (PU) among the Turkish society. The related research was conducted within the Spring Semester of 2011-2012 Academic Year on 387 students attending Inonu University Medical Faculty. Besides the scale, a questionnaire for determining the descriptive features of the students was also used in the study. 3 weeks later than the first application, a second application was executed on 118 students in order to evaluate the test-retest reliability. The German original scale was translated into Turkish by using the group translation and retranslation techniques. Turkish questionnaire of the scale was reviewed by 10 experts to determine for the content (theme) validity. The necessary corrections were done in accordance with the suggestions of the experts, and the value of the content validity index of the scale (KGİ) was found 0.89. After receiving the opinions of the experts and doing the necessary corrections, a pilot practice was concluded on 20 students who showed similar features with the sample group. The scale reached its final position after the suggested changes were executed. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses performed to test the structure validity of the scale were completed, and a three-factor structure explaining the 45% of the total scale variance was obtained. Cronbach Alpha value calculated for the reliability analyses of the scales was found 0.854, meanwhile the test-retest correlation coefficient of the scale for the total points was found 0.86. Additionally, the difference between the total average points of the pre-test and the re-test of the scale was not found statistically meaningful (t =1.02, p = 0.30). As a result of these values are obtained, the PU scale Turkish questionnaire was accepted as valid and reliable and the scale is suggested to be used for larger and different samples.