THE PROFILE OF INTERNET DEPENDENCY IN TURKEY AND DEVELOPMENT OF INTERNET ADDICTION SCALE: STUDY OF VALIDITY & RELIABILITY

The purpose of this study is to build a Turkish internet addiction scale. Also, describing internet dependency profile of Turkey is aimed. The sample of the study included 754 students at secondary education level. The scale was five-point likert-type and consisted of 35 items. In grading of scale, "TwoStep Cluster Analysis Method" in classification methods was applied to the sample due to obtain detail results about addiction situations of individuals. Cronbach alfa (a) internal consistency coefficient of the scale was found to be .944. In this study, exploratory factor analysis for structural validity, and confirmatory factor analysis to test the correctness of factor structure were determined as method. The scale is consisted of four sub-factors which were defined as "Withdrawal", "Controlling difficulty", "Disorder in Functionality" and "Social Isolation". Total stated variance regarding the scale is 47,463%. In this study; 76 (10,1%) of 754 individuals were found to be addictive of internet.