The Game Experience Questionnaire: reliability and validity of the Web-based Revised Arabic Version.

Abstract

Nowadays, digital gaming occupies a central position in the entertainment industry where it has developed into a cherished kind of entertainment in markets all over the world. Besides that, it provides other sectors with various social and economic benefits. The Game Experience Questionnaire (GEQ) is a free, quantitative and comprehensive self-report measure, which was developed to assess the player game experience. Despite being a widely used tool by many research projects in the past, it was not adapted into Arabic. Furthermore, several components of the scale proved problematic from a psychometric point of view. Therefore, a modified version of the scale is needed to measure the gaming experience of the Arabic population. Validation and examination of the psychometrics of an adapted Arabic version of the Game Experience Scale in Tunisia. 711 voluntary participants completed an online survey which included an Arabic version of the Game Experience Questionnaire (GEQ), gaming data and socio-demographic questionnaire. Subjects were randomized in order to complete two phases: exploratory and confirmatory. The exploratory data was acquired from 360 respondents whose mean age was 23.89 ±2.29 (111 females; 30.83% and 249 males; 69.2%). On the other hand, the confirmatory data was obtained from the remaining 411 subjects whose mean age was 21.94 ±1.80 (169 females; 41.1% and 242males; 58.9%). after the elimination of two items, the exploratory and the confirmatory factor analysis provided an adequate factor structure of the Arabic version of the GEQ. In addition, the internal consistency coefficients suggest the reliability of the instrument. Significant differences were revealed for three sub components: Flow by age (p<.001, ES=0.013), gender (p<.05, ES=0.007) and game type p<.001, ES=0.03). For competence and immersion, significant differences were highlighted by the type of game (p<.05, ES=0.017). The discriminant and convergent validity of the instrument were supported respectively by calculating the Extracted Mean Variance (AVE) and comparing the square roots of the AVE to the correlation coefficients. The Arabic adapted version of the GEQ is a valid and reliable version and can be administered to measure the game experience in Arab countries.