IGDS9-SF

Validated

Internet Gaming Disorder Scale – Short-Form (IGDS9-SF)

Adolescents and adults (12+)Self~3 min9 questions

These questions will ask you about your gaming activity during the past year (i.e., last 12 months). By gaming activity we understand any gaming-related activity that has been played either from a computer/laptop or from a gaming console or any other kind of device (e.g., mobile phone, tablet, etc.) both online and/or offline.

Report details · optional

Patient initials / IDCompleted byDate

Shown on the report and stored with the screening record. Use initials or a code, not full names.

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About this screener — evidence, source

A unidimensional nine-item scale, one item per DSM-5 Section III criterion for Internet Gaming Disorder, rated from Never to Very Often for the past 12 months. Totals range from 9 to 45. The authors’ classification counts criteria rated “Very Often”; a total-score cut-off has also been validated against clinical interview.

Evidence · validated

Developed and validated by Pontes & Griffiths (2015) and since translated and studied widely (a 2021 systematic review summarises its psychometric evidence). Against DSM-5 clinical interview in 131 clinical participants (validated further in 3,742 university students), a total of 32 was the optimal cut-off: sensitivity 98.0%, specificity 91.9% (Qin et al., 2020, Chinese sample).

Source & licence

Pontes HM, Griffiths MD. Measuring DSM-5 Internet Gaming Disorder: development and validation of a short psychometric scale. Comput Human Behav. 2015;45:137–143. Qin L, Cheng L, Hu M, et al. Clarification of the cut-off score for nine-item Internet Gaming Disorder Scale–Short Form (IGDS9-SF) in a Chinese context. Front Psychiatry. 2020;11:470.

Licence: Free to use — the author states “you do not need to contact me to ask for permission to use any of the tests”; site content is licensed CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.

Non-commercial use with attribution; do not modify the items (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). English form: osf.io/cz4vu.

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