Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Serious Games
Date Submitted: Feb 22, 2021
Date Accepted: Sep 9, 2021
Date Submitted to PubMed: Dec 1, 2021
The relationship between illness representations and symptoms of internet gaming disorder among young people: A cross-lagged model
ABSTRACT
Background:
The Common-Sense Model of illness suggests that mental representations of health threats may affect behavioral reactions to them. Little is known about how youth perceive the newly defined Internet gaming disorder (IGD).
Objective:
This study aims to investigate illness representations of IGD and its associations with IGD in college students.
Methods:
A one-year longitudinal study was conducted with a convenience sample of Chinese college students (N=591, 57.9% females).
Results:
10.1% and 9.1% of the participants were classified as having probable IGD at baseline (T1) and follow-up (T2). The correlations between some dimensions of illness representations regarding IGD (i.e., consequence, timeline, personal control, treatment control, and concern) at T1 and IGD at T2 and between IGD at T1 and the dimensions of illness reorientations at T2 (i.e., consequence, timeline, personal control, and emotional response) were statistically significant. The cross-lagged model fit the data well, χ2=1.14, df=2, CFI=.99, RMSEA=.01, and showed that IGD at T1 was positively associated with consequences and timeline and negatively associated with personal control at T2.
Conclusions:
Such perceptions can be used to guide the development of educational programs and psychological interventions to reduce the over-pessimistic perceptions about IGD and the self among gamers.
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.