Development and Validation of the Internet Gratification Scale for Adolescents

The proliferation of Internet usage has motivated Internet researchers and practitioners to study possible gratifications underlying Internet use. Despite the fact that research examining Internet gratification is more than two decades old, no attempt has been made in the last decade to develop an instrument that has known reliability of scores and validity of inferences to examine the various Internet gratifications. To bridge this gap, the present study has estimated the reliability of scores and validity of inferences of a 27-item instrument, examining different Internet uses and gratification (U&G) among 1,914 adolescent Internet users. The development and validation process involved exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, examination of convergent and discriminant validity, and other measures of construct validity and reliability. The factor analyses revealed a six-factor structure, representing six Internet gratifications, namely, information seeking, exposure, connection, coordination, entertainment, and social influence. This instrument exhibits excellent internal reliability. The practical and theoretical contributions of this instrument are also presented.