Design and validation of an instrument to evaluate phubbing behaviors

Abstract

The present study reports on the process carried out to design and validate a questionnaire that evaluates phubbing behaviors and the effects of these behaviors on people’s lives. These behaviors are defined as the act of ignoring people in a social environment by looking at one’s phone rather than paying attention to an ongoing conversation (Błachnio and Przepiorka, 2019). The procedure employed a natural semantic network method in order to create the instrument in collaboration with a group of experts. Content validation processes pertaining to the questionnaire are presented. These employed an expert panel and examination of reliability through Cronbach’s alpha coefficients following administration with a pilot sample. The sample used for content validity of the questionnaire was composed of eighteen experts. These experts discussed meanings of the word phubbing. The results obtained produced eighty-six concepts related to the term phubbing. These were structure according to the following five questionnaire dimensions: cultural, technological, social, psychological and communicational. Reliability analyses, carried out with a pilot sample of 250 individuals, suggested that the instrument was suitable for the evaluation of phubbing behaviors in young people and adults.