[Development, validity and reliability of a general addiction scale. A preliminary study].
BACKGROUND
The authors develop a General Scale to measure the intensity of the addiction to substances (not alcohol, not opiates) and addictive behaviors.


METHODS
The General Scale is a self-scale compound by eleven ítems that was delivered to fifty and five students of the courses 5 masculine and 6 masculine of the Medicine of the University of Alcalá (Madrid, Spain), and was them requested that applied said scale from different supposed addictive: tobacco; tea, coffee or cola drinks; chocolate; others sweet; alcohol; sex; use of the personal computer and/or Internet and/or videoplay; and to practice sports. Of that manner, each subject provided a total of 440 complimented scales.Finally, it was requested the subjects that indicated in a scale apart, their degree of addiction from the different exposed concepts. Those data served of external criterion.


CONCLUSIONS
The Scale is monodimensional, and shows a high construct validity (account 63% of the total variance obtained by a Factorial Analysis), a high alpha reliability (alpha: 0.94) and a good internal consistency (split-half method with the Spearman-Brown correction; R: 0.92). All items share with the general addiction concept that represents the total score of the Scale, an common variance proportion equal or over the 52%.


CONCLUSIONS
The Scale seems be a valid and reliable instrument to compare groups of the calls new addictions of a measurable manner.
Ramos Brieva
J A
JA
Servicio de Psiquiatría, Hospital Ramón y Cajal, Madrid, Spain.
Sansebastián Cabasés
J
J
Madoz Gurpide
A
A
D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D019966:Substance-Related Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis*; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires