Prevalence of smartphone addiction and its related factors among pre-clinical students at IIUM Kuantan Campus 2016
Background. Smartphone addiction is a phenomenon whereby a person is unable to cut down the smartphone use and it triggers physiological stress because of overuse and leads to anxiety when their smartphones are not with them. Medical students are among the population developing smartphone addiction....
| Main Authors: | , , , , , |
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| Format: | Conference or Workshop Item |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
2016
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://irep.iium.edu.my/52687/ http://irep.iium.edu.my/52687/11/52687.pdf |
| Summary: | Background. Smartphone addiction is a phenomenon whereby a person is unable to cut down the smartphone use and it triggers physiological stress because of overuse and leads to anxiety when their smartphones are not with them. Medical students are among the population developing smartphone addiction. The aim of this study is to determine the prevalence of smartphone addiction and its related factors among preclinical students at IIUM Kuantan Campus.
Methods. A cross-sectional study using simple random sampling involving 200 medical students of IIUM Kuantan Campus Year 1 and Year 2 of both genders. Data were collected using a self-administered questionnaire through an online website which is a Google Form between 13 and 18 July 2016. Study tools used was Smartphone Addiction Scale: Short Version (SAS-SV), a validated structured questionnaire with Cronbach’s Alpha value of 0.966. Factors studied include gender, year of study, household income, time consumption, expenditure and purpose. Data were analyzed by using SPSS version 23.0. The percentage of each variable was calculated and the differences were tested using chi-square test. The p value was taken at p <0.05 as significant.
Results. This study revealed that the prevalence of smartphone addiction among pre-clinical medical students of IIUM Kuantan is 50.0%. Year of study (p=0.004) and average number of hours spent (p=0.001) are statistically significant to become factors of associated with smartphone addiction. Second year student is found to be more addicted than the first year students to smartphone (61.6% versus 41.2%), whereas for average number of hours spent on smartphone, the percentage of smartphone addition is highest among those who spent more than 6 hours on their smartphone (72.2%).
However; gender, household income, monthly expenditure and primary purpose of using smartphone were all found to be not significant to become factors related to smartphone addiction, even though the percentage are higher among those with household income of between RM 2000 to RM 2999 (65.2%), male (59.6%), spent more than RM 100 a month on their smartphone (100.0%) and among those who use smartphone for non-Social Network Services (54.5%)
Conclusion. The prevalence of those who have smartphone addiction among preclinical students at IIUM Kuantan Campus is 50.0% and only year of study and average number of hours spent are statistically significant to become factors related to smartphone addiction.
Thus, this shows that smartphone addiction is documented among IIUM medical students and warrants a closer look and appropriate reference for those who have the addiction. In addition, further research should be done with expanded approach to students of other kulliyyah or universities in Malaysia to determine its magnitude and severity. |
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