Psychometric Validation of the Chinese Compulsive Internet Use Scale (CIUS) with Taiwanese High School Adolescents

Amandeep Dhir, Sufen Chen, Marko Nieminen

The recent development of internet infrastructure has fuelled a popular concern that young Asian internet users are experiencing Internet addiction due to excessive Internet use. In order to understand the phenomenon, psychometric validation of a 14-item Compulsive Internet Use Scale (CIUS), with 417 Chinese adolescents has been performed. Compared to other instruments for use with Chinese populations, e.g. the 20-item Internet Addiction Test (IAT) and the 26-item Chen Internet Addiction Scale, the CIUS is relatively concise, and easy to use for measuring and diagnosing Internet addiction. The present psychometric validation has found good factorial stability with a one-factor solution for the CIUS. The internal consistency and model fit indices were very good, and even better than any previous CIUS validations. The Chinese CIUS is a valid and reliable self-reporting instrument for examining compulsive Internet use among Chinese adolescents. Other findings included: male adolescents tend to experience more compulsive Internet use than their female counterparts, and CIUS scores were positively correlated with the daily Internet use time and negatively correlated with the academic performance of the participants. No significant relationships between the CIUS, ICT accessibility, family economic condition, parental occupation or religion were found.