PVP questionnaire: what is it and how is it used to detect addiction

In recent years, consumption of digital entertainment, especially video games, has become widely popular that has come to break generational barriers.

Candy Crash, Fortnite, Pokémon Go, World of Warcraft are just one of the few video game titles that have in children, adolescents and adults a large group of fans, who dedicate several hours to them daily.

Enjoying this type of entertainment is fine and age should not be an obstacle to be able to enjoy this leisure. But everything should be done in moderation, otherwise problems may arise. Today it is considered that a large percentage of the population, especially among adolescents, gambles at video games in an addictive way, involving problems in the sphere of studies, work, family and relationships social.

This is not new. Decades ago, the possibility of addictive behaviors arising with respect to new technologies was raised. That is why at the beginning of the 2000s one of the first tools was developed to measure the severity of this type of problem: the PVP questionnaire.

We are going to explain what this questionnaire consists of, what were the antecedents that led to the elaborate, in addition to mentioning some research that has used it and some of its psychometric properties remarkable.

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What is the PVP questionnaire?

The PVP questionnaire, whose English name is Problem Video Game Playing Questionnaire, is the first psychological instrument designed for the evaluation of the problems derived from the abuse of video games. This questionnaire can include any type of video game from any type of console, be it portable (game boy), desktop (PlayStation) or arcade (arcade machines).

This tool was released in 2002 in the journal Addiction, being its authors the professors of psychology Ricardo A. Tejeiro Salguero, from the University of Liverpool and Rosa M. Bersabé Morán, from the University of Malaga.

The PVP questionnaire started from the revision of several of the DSM-IV criteria for disorders associated with substance dependence and pathological gambling. At the beginning of the 2000s, there was still a fairly limited vision with what was understood as gambling. Despite the suspected problems of video game abuse, pathological gambling was still seen as exclusive to casinos and slot machines.

That is why the application of instruments such as the PVP questionnaire and others that were developed later are adequate to know, quantitatively, how serious the problem with video games can be, but without the need to establish a specific diagnosis.

However, given the growing use of video games in youth, researchers and the APA itself and WHO raised the need to include the abuse of this type of drug within addictions. entertainment. It should be said that, to this day, there is still controversy over whether the problems associated with new technologies, video games and Internet should be considered addictions proper, and put in the same category as alcoholism and abuse of other substances.

In fact, while the WHO in the ICD-11 has included a disorder related to this type of addiction (gaming disorder), the APA did not consider it appropriate to include something similar in the preparation of DSM-5, considering that there was not enough evidence to form the diagnostic label for internet gambling disorder.

Background

Psychologists Ricardo A. Tejeiro Salguero and Rosa M. Bersabé Morán saw, in the early 2000s, that relatively little research had been done on the field of pathological behaviors associated with video game abuse.

Although already at that time it was beginning to point out that abusing new technologies could mean addictive situations, accompanied by antisocial behaviors and loss of large amounts of money, Research at the time had been limited, for the most part, to looking at the number of hours people spent on this type of entertainment..

At that time, it was not at all clear what proportion of adolescents could be considered ‘addicted’ to this type of entertainment. Studies such as Brooks' of 1983 suggested that they should be a minority, while others, such as Egli and Meyers of 1984 stated that, in the population, one could expect percentages of between 10 and 15% of gamers addicted to video game.

Given the lack of diagnostic criteria for this type of behavior and the lack of adequate tools to measure them, Tejeiro Salguero and Bersabé Morán proceeded to prepare the PVP questionnaire based on criteria from the fourth edition of the DSM and several studies from the eighties and nineties that had laid the foundations to measure this type of problem in a timid way.

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Research

Given the importance that the PVP questionnaire acquired after its publication in the journal Addiction in 2003, this tool has been used in multiple subsequent investigations. The questionnaire is considered a benchmark when it comes to measuring video game abuse, such as the Beck Inventory for depression or the WAIS test for intelligence. It must be said that it has been used both in its original version and with minor modifications, either due to language or cultural differences.

To date, there are more than thirty published studies in which this questionnaire has been used, taking a sample from several countries: Spain, France, Iceland, the United States, Canada, Chile, Australia, Thailand, Brazil, Peru and the United Kingdom, among many more.

Psychometric properties

A recent systematic review of questionnaires related to addictions to new technologies, specifically the one carried out by Daniel L. King and company in 2013, concluded that the PVP questionnaire is the best instrument to address addictions associated with the abuse of video games and also the Internet addiction.

In 2002, when Tejeiro Salguero and Bersabé Morán carried out the validation study, administered this questionnaire to some 223 adolescents from the cities of Granada capital and La Línea de the conception. When the factor analysis was carried out, it was concluded that it was a one-dimensional test.

Internal consistency was acceptable despite having a limited number of items, obtaining a Crombach alpha coefficient of 0.67. Given this, the adaptations that can be made to this questionnaire must be made with great care, especially if its quantity is reduced, since it would lose internal consistency.

Bibliographic references:

• Brooks, B. D. (1983) [Untitled]. In: Baugham, S. S. & Clagett, P. D., eds. Video Games and Human Development: a Research Agenda for the 80s. Cambridge, MA: Gutman Library
• Egli, E. TO. & Meyers, L. S. (1984) The role of videogame playing in adolescent life: is there reason to be concerned? Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society, 22, 309–312.
• Elliott, L. Golub, A. Ream, G. and Dunlap, E. (2011) Video Game Genre as a Predictor of Problem Use. Cyberpsychology, behavior, and Social Networking, 15 (3), 155-161.
• Hart G. M., Johnson B., Stamm B., Angers N., Robinson A., Lally T., Fagley W.H. (2009) Effects of video games on adolescents and adults. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking 12 (1): 63-65.
• King,, D.L., Haagsma, M.C., Delfabbro, P.H., Gradisar, M. & Griffiths, M.D. (2013). Toward a consensus definition of pathological video-gaming: A systematic review of psychometric assessment tools. Clinical Psychology Review, 33 (3), 331-342 ..
• Lewis M. L., Weber R., Bowman N.D. (2008) They may be pixels, but they're MY pixels: "developing a metric of character attachment in role-playing video games. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking 11 (4) 515-518
• Ream, G. L., Elliott, L. C. and Dunlap, E. (2011) Playing Video Games While Using or Feeling the Effects of Substances: Associations with Substance Use Problems. 8(10), 3979-3998.
• Tejeiro-Salguero & Bersabé-Moran (2002). Measuring problem video game playing in adolescents. Addiction, 97, 1601-1606.
• Tolchinsky, A., and Jefferson, S. D. (2011) Problematic Video Game Play in a College Sample and Its Relationship to Time Management Skills and Attention-Deficit / Hyperactivity Disorder Symptomology Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking 14(9).