Thinking beyond cut-off scores in the assessment of potentially addictive behaviors: A brief illustration in the context of binge-watching

Abstract

While applying a diagnostic approach (i.e., comparing "clinical"cases with "healthy"controls) is part of our methodological habits as researchers and clinicians, this approach has been particularly criticized in the behavioral addictions research field, in which a lot of studies are conducted on "emerging"conditions. Here we exemplify the pitfalls of using a cut-off-based approach in the context of binge-watching (i.e., watching multiple episodes of series back-to-back) by demonstrating that no reliable cut-off scores could be determined with a widely used assessment instrument measuring binge-watching.