PARTNER PHUBBING: PORTUGUESE VALIDATION

Abstract

The present study aims to translate and validate the Partner Phubbing scale to Portuguese. Phubbing is defined as the action to ignore face-to-face contact in order to focus on online social networking. This behaviour is a growing concern to the Portuguese population, with a previous study indicating addictive smartphone patterns in over 14% of participants. Online questionnaires gathered 351 participants over 16 years old (M=32.8 SD=11.78). reliability analysis proved to be adequate (α=.92), all items revealed a normal distribution and confirmatory factor analysis was carried out. Model fit results (x2/df=2.979, RMSEA= 0.081, NFI= 0.964, CFI= 0.976) indicated acceptable results, though item 7 did not significantly contribute to de scale (-.04). The item 7, the only item inversely created, needs to be reassessed. The item was not deleted, as its issues are restricted to its inverse wording or position in the scale. Future studies should either: rewrite the item in order to be in the same direction as all the other items; or change its placement in the order of items. Despite this limitation, the Pphubbing scale is valid for use with the Portuguese population and proves to be a valuable tool in a newly formed field of research.