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An Investigation into Video Game Addiction in Pre-Adolescents and Adolescents: A Cross-Sectional Study

Background and Objectives: Game addiction is an emerging problem in public health. A gaming disorder is characterized by a pattern of persistent or recurrent gaming behavior. The behavioral pattern is severe enough to implicate a significant involvement of family, social, educational, professional,...

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Autores principales: Esposito, Maria Rosaria, Serra, Nicola, Guillari, Assunta, Simeone, Silvio, Sarracino, Franca, Continisio, Grazia Isabella, Rea, Teresa
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7279472/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32384823
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/medicina56050221
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author Esposito, Maria Rosaria
Serra, Nicola
Guillari, Assunta
Simeone, Silvio
Sarracino, Franca
Continisio, Grazia Isabella
Rea, Teresa
author_facet Esposito, Maria Rosaria
Serra, Nicola
Guillari, Assunta
Simeone, Silvio
Sarracino, Franca
Continisio, Grazia Isabella
Rea, Teresa
author_sort Esposito, Maria Rosaria
collection PubMed
description Background and Objectives: Game addiction is an emerging problem in public health. A gaming disorder is characterized by a pattern of persistent or recurrent gaming behavior. The behavioral pattern is severe enough to implicate a significant involvement of family, social, educational, professional, or other relationships. Therefore, greater attention needs to be paid to potential addictive behaviors in terms of video games in order to identify both pre-adolescents and adolescents at risk and to provide them with adequate assistance. Materials and Methods: A random sample of 622 students including pre-adolescents and adolescents were enrolled from September 1st to October 31th 2016, and the Game Addiction Scale (GAS) interview was used to identify pathological students with both Monothetic and Polythetic analysis. Results: This study shows the presence of pathological students is equal to 1.93%, with 37.46% and 4.50% obtained with Monothetic and Polythetic analysis (global and partial), respectively. In our sample, the most frequent were students with a gaming time of 1 or 2 h, and students with a day gaming frequency of 1, 2, or 3 times a day. The items with more pathological students were Item 2 (i.e., Tolerance) and 4 (i.e., Withdrawal). Every item was positively correlated with Daily gaming time (hours) and Daily game frequency, excluding Item 4 (i.e., Withdrawal). Finally, the Monothetic GAS score was positively correlated with Daily gaming time while the Polythetic Global GAS was positively correlated with Daily game frequency and negatively with Education level; instead, the Polythetic Partial GAS score was positively correlated with only Daily gaming time. Conclusion: Males are pathological gamblers more so than females and spend more time playing video games. An increase in Daily game frequency or Daily gaming time implicates an increase in video game addictions, while an increase in Education level, which generally corresponds to a greater age, implicates a decrease in game addiction. Finally, we observed that the correlations obtained between the Polythetic Partial GAS score with the independent variables such as Age, Gender, Education level, Daily gaming time (hours), and Daily game frequency were analogous to the significant correlations obtained with the Monothetic GAS score, while these correlations were different for the Polythetic Global GAS and the independent variables. These results suggest that the use of the original Polythetic scale should not be neglected.
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spelling pubmed-72794722020-06-17 An Investigation into Video Game Addiction in Pre-Adolescents and Adolescents: A Cross-Sectional Study Esposito, Maria Rosaria Serra, Nicola Guillari, Assunta Simeone, Silvio Sarracino, Franca Continisio, Grazia Isabella Rea, Teresa Medicina (Kaunas) Article Background and Objectives: Game addiction is an emerging problem in public health. A gaming disorder is characterized by a pattern of persistent or recurrent gaming behavior. The behavioral pattern is severe enough to implicate a significant involvement of family, social, educational, professional, or other relationships. Therefore, greater attention needs to be paid to potential addictive behaviors in terms of video games in order to identify both pre-adolescents and adolescents at risk and to provide them with adequate assistance. Materials and Methods: A random sample of 622 students including pre-adolescents and adolescents were enrolled from September 1st to October 31th 2016, and the Game Addiction Scale (GAS) interview was used to identify pathological students with both Monothetic and Polythetic analysis. Results: This study shows the presence of pathological students is equal to 1.93%, with 37.46% and 4.50% obtained with Monothetic and Polythetic analysis (global and partial), respectively. In our sample, the most frequent were students with a gaming time of 1 or 2 h, and students with a day gaming frequency of 1, 2, or 3 times a day. The items with more pathological students were Item 2 (i.e., Tolerance) and 4 (i.e., Withdrawal). Every item was positively correlated with Daily gaming time (hours) and Daily game frequency, excluding Item 4 (i.e., Withdrawal). Finally, the Monothetic GAS score was positively correlated with Daily gaming time while the Polythetic Global GAS was positively correlated with Daily game frequency and negatively with Education level; instead, the Polythetic Partial GAS score was positively correlated with only Daily gaming time. Conclusion: Males are pathological gamblers more so than females and spend more time playing video games. An increase in Daily game frequency or Daily gaming time implicates an increase in video game addictions, while an increase in Education level, which generally corresponds to a greater age, implicates a decrease in game addiction. Finally, we observed that the correlations obtained between the Polythetic Partial GAS score with the independent variables such as Age, Gender, Education level, Daily gaming time (hours), and Daily game frequency were analogous to the significant correlations obtained with the Monothetic GAS score, while these correlations were different for the Polythetic Global GAS and the independent variables. These results suggest that the use of the original Polythetic scale should not be neglected. MDPI 2020-05-06 /pmc/articles/PMC7279472/ /pubmed/32384823 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/medicina56050221 Text en © 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Esposito, Maria Rosaria
Serra, Nicola
Guillari, Assunta
Simeone, Silvio
Sarracino, Franca
Continisio, Grazia Isabella
Rea, Teresa
An Investigation into Video Game Addiction in Pre-Adolescents and Adolescents: A Cross-Sectional Study
title An Investigation into Video Game Addiction in Pre-Adolescents and Adolescents: A Cross-Sectional Study
title_full An Investigation into Video Game Addiction in Pre-Adolescents and Adolescents: A Cross-Sectional Study
title_fullStr An Investigation into Video Game Addiction in Pre-Adolescents and Adolescents: A Cross-Sectional Study
title_full_unstemmed An Investigation into Video Game Addiction in Pre-Adolescents and Adolescents: A Cross-Sectional Study
title_short An Investigation into Video Game Addiction in Pre-Adolescents and Adolescents: A Cross-Sectional Study
title_sort investigation into video game addiction in pre-adolescents and adolescents: a cross-sectional study
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7279472/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32384823
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/medicina56050221
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