SCL-90-R and 16PF profiles of senior high school students with excessive internet use.
OBJECTIVE
To investigate the psychiatric symptomatology and personality characteristics of Korean senior high school students considered to use the Internet to excess.


METHODS
We administered a questionnaire packet to students that included 4 measures. These measures included a questionnaire on Internet use patterns during the previous month, the Internet Addiction Test (IAT), the Symptom Checklist-90-R (SCL-90-R), and the Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire (16PF). A total of 328 students, aged 15 to 19 years, participated in the study.


RESULTS
Students were divided into 4 Internet user groups according to their IAT total scores: nonusers (n = 59, 18.0%), minimal users (n = 155, 47.3%), moderate users (n = 98, 29.9%), and excessive users (n = 16, 4.9%). The SCL-90-R showed that the excessive users group, when compared with the other groups in this study, reported the highest levels of symptomatology. The 16PF also revealed that excessive users were easily affected by feeling, emotionally less stable, imaginative, absorbed in thought, self-sufficient, experimenting, and preferred their own decisions.


CONCLUSIONS
This study suggests that senior high school students who use the Internet to excess report and subsequently exhibit significantly more psychiatric symptoms than students who use the Internet less frequently. In addition, excessive users appear to have a distinctive personality profile when compared with nonusers, minimal, and moderate users.
Yang
Chang-Kook
CK
Department of Psychiatry, Dong-A University College of Medicine, Busan, Korea. ckyang@daunet.donga.ac.kr
Choe
Byeong-Moo
BM
Baity
Matthew
M
Lee
Jeong-Hyeong
JH
Cho
Jin-Seok
JS
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D020407:Internet / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D008297:Male; D010554:Personality Disorders / Q000453:epidemiology; D012574:Schools; D013334:Students / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires