Taipei, Aug. 17 (CNA) The National Health Research Institutes (NHRI) said Monday that it has developed a self-reporting questionnaire to assess addiction to mobile gaming.
The Problematic Mobile Gaming Questionnaire, developed by a research team at NHRI, has two versions, with 12 and four questions, respectively, the team leader Lin Yu-hsuan said at a news conference.
By completing the questionnaire, people will be able to evaluate their own mobile gaming habits over the past three months, Lin said.
On the shortened version, a score of 10 or higher indicates a high likelihood of problematic mobile gaming habits, Lin said, citing his team's research, which was published last October in a peer-reviewed international academic journal, Cyberpsychology Behavior and Social Networking.
The questions in the shorter questionnaire ask mobile gamers to state whether they often experience dry/sore eyes, muscle aches, or other physical discomforts as a result of playing for a long time; cannot resist playing despite their best intentions; are averaging more time per week than three months ago; and get restless and irritable when they cannot play.
For the research into developing the questionnaire, the NHRI team recruited 10,775 students, from grade 4 to senior high school level, who had mobile phones, Lin said.
Of that number, 113 were assessed by a psychiatrist or a clinical psychologist to confirm the accuracy of the information on the questionnaire and how it relates to indicators of gaming addiction, he said.
The results of the study showed a correlation between time spent on mobile gaming and typical behavioral addiction indicators such as intolerance for and withdrawal from socializing, Lin said.
He suggested that people use the questionnaire, in conjunction with the Know Addiction app that he developed, to determine whether their mobile gaming habits are problematic.
