Validity, Reliability and Psychometric Evaluation of Persian Version of Young Internet Addiction Questionnaire For Tabriz University and Tabriz University of Medical Sciences Students

Introduction: The concept of addiction has developed enough to be used outside of areas such as drugs and alcohol and is being generally applied to many other behaviors such as internet use. The aim of this study is to evaluate the validity and reliability of the Persian version of the Young Internet Addiction Questionnaire (YIAQ) in university students in Tabriz.

Methods: Initially, YIAQ was translated from English to Persian by someone with expert English skills, and then the Persian version was translated to English by another person. After that, a specialist in the field of psychiatry with acceptable skills in the field of English compared these two versions and suggested needed changes. In this methodological (mixed method) study, the Delphi method was used in the qualitative part and a cross-sectional design was used in the quantitative part. The Persian version was evaluated using the Delphi method by ten specialists in the field of internet use and they mentioned changes needed to evaluate face and content validity. For the evaluation of the Cronbach’s alpha coefficient, 200 students with different majors at Tabriz University were selected randomly and filled out the Persian version of YIAQ. Reliability was confirmed by clinical interview.

Results: The reliability of the questionnaire was acceptable for 20 questions with Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of 0.93. The face and content validity were determined by the Delphi method and application of opinions of specialists in the field of internet use.

Conclusion: The Persian version of YIAQ is valid and reliable for the evaluation of internet addiction