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The development and validation of digital amnesia scale

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Abstract

The usage of digital devices has increased rapidly in recent times due to the expansion of online learning platforms, leading to greater reliance on them. As a result, people forget simple information, dates, and appointments that might lead to digital amnesia. Hence, we aimed to develop and validate a digital amnesia scale (DAS). The study was carried out in two studies. In the first study, we collected data from 616 college students to examine the factor structure of the model and its underlying dimensions for a large pool of items. These analyses showed that the scale formed a three-dimensional structure: digital distraction, digital dependency, and digital detox. In the second study, we collected data from 383 college students to confirm the three-factor structure of the DAS. A satisfactory level of reliability was demonstrated by McDonald’s ω value for the dimensions. The test–retest reliability was found to be 0.76. The DAS had satisfactory convergent and discriminant validity. This scale could be useful for both researchers and educators to assess digital amnesia among college students.

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Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are openly available in Mendely at https://doi.org/10.17632/gstst6h3cf.1.

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Funding

The authors did not receive support from any organization for the submitted work.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Christ University, Bangalore, Karnataka, 560060, India

    S. James Robert

  2. Department of Psychology, Periyar University, Salem, 636 011, India

    S. Kadhiravan

  3. Department of Psychology, Fordham University, New York, NY, USA

    Dean McKay

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  2. S. Kadhiravan
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  3. Dean McKay
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Contributions

S. James Robert: Conceptualization, Writing – original draft, Methodology, Formal analysis, Investigation, Validation, Visualization. S. Kadhiravan: Conceptualization, Writing – review & editing, Methodology, Investigation, Supervision, Resources, Research administration. Dean McKay: Conceptualization, Writing – review & editing, Methodology, Investigation, Supervision, Research administration.

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Correspondence to S. James Robert.

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Ethics

The Institute Ethical Committee (IEC) of the Faculty of Social Sciences of Periyar University in Salem, Tamil Nadu, India, approved the research work. The ethical standards from the Declaration of Helsinki were followed. Informed consent was obtained from all the participants after briefing them about the nature of the study.

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Robert, S.J., Kadhiravan, S. & McKay, D. The development and validation of digital amnesia scale. Curr Psychol (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-024-05757-4

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