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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Psychol.
Sec. Media Psychology
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1444039

The Bergen Facebook addiction scale: A reliability generalization meta-analysis

Provisionally accepted
Ma Jianling Ma Jianling 1*ZhengCheng Jin ZhengCheng Jin 1Chang Liu Chang Liu 2*
  • 1 Chongqing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Chongqing, China
  • 2 Yangtze Normal University, Fuling District, Chongqing Municipality, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    The Bergen Facebook Addiction Scale (BFAS) is a screening instrument frequently used to evaluate Facebook addiction. However, its reliability varies considerably across studies. This study aimed to evaluate the reliability of the BFAS and its adaptation, the Bergen Social Media Addiction Scale (BSMAS), and to identify which study characteristics are associated with this reliability. We performed a reliability generalization meta-analysis involving 173,641 participants across 127 articles, which reported 147 Cronbach's alpha values for internal consistency. The random-effects model revealed that the pooled Cronbach's alpha values were 0.8535 (95% CI [0.8409, 0.8660]) for the BFAS and 0.8248 (95% CI [0.8116, 0.8380]) for the BSMAS. Moderator analyses indicated that the mean and standard deviation of the total scores accounted for 10.06% and 36.7% of the total variability in the BFAS alpha values, respectively. For the BSMAS, the standard deviation of the total scores and sample size accounted for 13.54% and 10.22% of the total variability alpha values, respectively. Meta-ANOVA analyses revealed that none of the categorical variables significantly affected the estimated alpha values for either the BFAS or BSMAS. Our findings endorse the BFAS and BSMAS as reliable instruments for measuring social media addiction.

    Keywords: Facebook addiction, Facebook addiction scale, Reliability, Reliability generalization, Meta-analysis

    Received: 13 Jun 2024; Accepted: 21 Nov 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Jianling, Jin and Liu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence:
    Ma Jianling, Chongqing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Chongqing, China
    Chang Liu, Yangtze Normal University, Fuling District, 408100, Chongqing Municipality, China

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.