Abstract
Despite the high prevalence of adolescents' pornography use and increasing societal concerns about it, the examination of problematic pornography use (PPU) among this population is still scarce, potentially due to the lack of well-validated, reliable measures. The aims of the present study were to validate a short, theory-based measure of PPU in a diverse sample of adolescents and identify a potentially at-risk problematic pornography user group. We used a sample of 802 adolescents (35% girls; 14% sexual minority; Mage = 15.4 years, SD = 0.6) who reported lifetime pornography use, collected as part of an ongoing longitudinal study on adolescents' sexual health. To examine the psychometric properties of the short, six-item version of the Problematic Pornography Consumption Scale for adolescents (PPCS-6-A), we conducted confirmatory factor analysis, gender and sexual orientation measurement invariance testing, and assessed theoretically relevant correlates (e.g., masturbation frequency). We conducted latent profile analysis to identify adolescents at risk of PPU. The PPCS-6-A demonstrated strong psychometric properties in terms of factor structure, measurement invariance (i.e., boys vs. girls, and heterosexual vs. sexual minority adolescents), and reliability, and correlated reasonably with the assessed variables. Ten percent of participants were identified as being at-risk of PPU. The PPCS-6-A can be considered a short, reliable, and valid scale to assess PPU in adolescents, and may distinguish between low-risk and at-risk problematic users. Its use in future studies could lead to a better understanding of the prevalence and characteristics of adolescents' PPU. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).
Highlights
Validity and Reliability of the Short Version of the Problematic Pornography Consumption Scale (PPCS-6-A) in Adolescents
Structural Validity and Reliability of the PPCS-6-A Given that the PPCS-6-A is a theory-based scale (Griffiths, 2005) and demonstrated good psychometric properties using a one-factor model in previous studies (Bőthe, Tóth-Király, Demetrovics, et al, 2020) and a one-factor solution emerged based on the results of an exploratory factor analysis in the present study, we conducted a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to examine the adequacy of the one-factor model (Table 1)
The RMSEA value was greater than .08, the Comparative Fit Index (CFI) and Tucker–Lewis index (TLI) values suggested that the one-factor model had an acceptable fit to the data in the total sample (CFI = .982, TLI = .969, RMSEA = .088 [90%CI .069-.109]), and the pornography use (PPU) latent factor was well-defined by strong factor loadings (Table 2)2
Summary
Despite the high prevalence of adolescents’ pornography use and increasing societal concerns about it, the examination of problematic pornography use (PPU) among this population is still scarce, potentially due to the lack of well-validated, reliable measures. Prior studies examining PPU among adolescents either only assessed the frequency of adolescents’ pornography use and considered frequent use as problematic (Cho, 2016; Svedin et al, 2011) or used scales that were developed and validated with adult populations (Doornwaard et al, 2016; Kohut & Štulhofer, 2018; Morelli et al, 2017), without a careful examination of the psychometric properties of the scales in adolescent samples. Given PPU’s theoretically relevant and empirically pre-established positive associations with pornography use and masturbation frequency (Bőthe, Tóth-Király, Demetrovics, et al, 2020; Grubbs, Perry, et al, 2019; Kohut & Štulhofer, 2018), age at first pornography use (Gola et al, 2016; Lewczuk et al, 2017), sexual interest and arousal, and sexual distress (Bőthe et al, 2021; Leonhardt et al, 2020; Wéry & Billieux, 2016), we assessed these constructs as correlates to examine the convergent validity of PPCS-6-A. To prior work in adults and adolescent boys (Bőthe, Tóth-Király, et al, 2018; Štulhofer et al, 2020), latent profile analysis was conducted to identify adolescents potentially at risk of PPU
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