Self-Perception of Dependence as an Indicator of Smartphone Addiction-Establishment of a Cutoff Point in the SPAI-Spain Inventory

Background: In recent years, the abusive use of the smartphone has reached a situation that could be considered pathological. In this sense, different instruments to assess this problematic use or addiction to the smartphone are used. One of these instruments is the Smartphone Addition Inventory (SPAI), which has been validated in the Spanish language (SPAI-Spain). The main difficulty of these scales is to establish a cut-off point that determines such mobile addiction. On the other hand, self-perception was used in different addictions as a predictor of the problem.

Aim: The objective of this study was to establish the cut-off point in the scores of the SPAI-Spain, using as a reference the self-perception of addiction values.

Methods: A receiver operating characteristics (ROC) analysis was carried out, establishing as the cut-off point the one that presented a higher value of Youden J, indicative of its sensitivity and specificity.

Results: 2958 participants from the university community completed the SPAI-Spain questionnaire. Differences in SPAI-Spain scores were found among age groups and gender, even though not all of them were statistically significant. When using the self-perception of smartphone addiction as the benchmark value, a score of 44 was established as the cutting point of the SPAI-Spain questionnaire, with a Youden J corresponding to 0.416.

Conclusions: The implementation of a cut-off point of the SPAI-Spain questionnaire makes it an instrument that allows early identification of those individuals at risk of addiction, as well as the establishment of preventive and/or intervention measures.