Psychometric Properties of Social Media and Academic Influence Scale (SMAIS) Using Exploratory Factor Analysis

Abstract

The paper presents validation study to determine psychometric adequacy of a measure of Social Media on Academic Attainment among university students. A sample of 200 undergraduate students from Northwest University, Kano was drawn through random sampling. The internal consistency index of the measure was found satisfactory with 0.76. Moreover, the instrument demonstrates acceptable psychometric properties and four distinct factors that reflect the influence of social media on academic attainment with access to social media trust being the most important. The Exploratory Factor Analysis identified four factors labeled as 'access to social media', 'academic communication', 'exposure' and 'academic attainment' explaining 24.11%, 13.50%, 10.30% and 8.69% of the variances respectively. Moreover, the instrument demonstrates factorial validity, construct validity and structure of measures of constructs and the four factor solution explains 56.61% total of variance.