Establishing a reflective-formative higher-order measurement model for the Smartphone Addiction Inventory-Short Form (SPAI-SF)

Given that model misspecification threatens the validity of constructs and distorts statistical findings, in the context of Smartphone Addiction Inventory-Short Form (SPAI-SF), this study investigates whether smartphone addiction construct should be modelled using reflective-reflective approach (Type I model) or reflective-formative approach (Type II model). Drawing on theoretical criteria such as (1) direction of causality, (2) interchangeability of the indicators, (3) correlation/covariation among the indicators, and (4) the relationship of indicators with other constructs, this study has specified smartphone addiction as a second-order reflective-formative construct. To verify this model specification, data was collected from undergraduate students at a Chinese university and analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM), confirmatory tetrad analysis (CTA-PLS), and several recently developed model fit indices (SRMR, d_ULS, d_G).

The results have not only determined that reflective-formative approach (Type II model) is more appropriate than reflective-reflective approach (Type I model) for modelling smartphone addiction construct but also provided strong evidence for construct validity. This study makes a significant theoretical and methodological contribution to the smartphone addiction literature by emphasizing the importance of considering the formative nature of the smartphone addiction construct when designing research frameworks. We are grateful to the anonymous reviewers for their insightful suggestions and constructive comments.

We deeply thank the editors for their patient work on our manuscript. The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. School of Nursing, Shandong Xiehe University, Jinan, Shandong, China Department of Social and Development Sciences, Faculty of Human Ecology, University Putra Malaysia, 43400, Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were conducted in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee, as well as the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

This study forms part of a larger research project examining the antecedents of smartphone addiction among college students. Ethical approval for the overall project was obtained from the institutional ethical review committee of Putian University (Ref. Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in this study.

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