Validation of the gaming addiction scale (gas) on Nigerian adolescents

A cross-sectional survey design utilizing an ex-post factor design was adopted to validate the Gaming Addiction Scale (GAS) using Nigerian secondary school adolescents. A purposive sampling technique was used to select the 338 (mean age and SD13.60 ±1.867) participants made up of 149 males and 189 females from several randomly selected secondary schools in a Local Government Area of Edo State, Nigeria. Participants responded to Gaming Addiction Scale (GAS) and Internet Gaming Disorder Test(IGD-20).Observed internal consistency of GAS showed a Cronbach's alpha coefficient of .75, a Spearman-Brown coefficient of .71 and Guttman Split-Half coefficient of .71. All but one of the items in the scale reported acceptable goodness-of-fit measures revealing corrected item-total correlations range of .192 to .523.Significant positive correlation was also observed between GAS and IGD-20 revealing concurrent validity score of (r = .459, P= .000).Determined new norms for GAS were scores51.81 for male and 47.98for female. GAS is gender sensitive and has acceptable psychometric properties for Nigerian population.