An Investigation of Predictors of the Internet Addiction among Adolescents

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to study the relationship between Internet addiction among adolescents and several independent variables, including depression, obsessive compulsiveness, temperament (novelty seeking, harm avoidance, reward dependence, persistence), and character types (self directedness, cooperativeness, self transcendence). The samples were 100 adolescents at Internet cafe in Sri Racha, Chon Buri, Thailand. The Research instruments included an adolescents Internet addiction scale, a depression scale, an obsessive- compulsive symptom scale, and a temperament and character inventory. Data were analyzed using SPSS and LISREL. Results indicated that the depression (DE), cooperativeness (CO), and harm avoidance (HA) variables had a statistically-significant relationship with Internet addiction (IA), having a multiple correlation of 0.75 (p<.05) with the dependent variable, accounted for 56.90 percent of its variance. The effect size of determination coefficients was 0.54.

    The regression equation of raw scores was

IAˆ = 0.94 + 0.43 (DE) - 0.30 (CO) + 0.17 (HA)

The regression equation of standard scores was Zˆ

IA = 0.82 Z DE - 0.41 Z CO + 0.23 Z HA.