The role of negative mood states and consequences of hypersexual behaviours in predicting hypersexuality among university students

Background and Aims: The issue of whether hypersexual behaviours exist among university students is controversial because many of these individuals engage in sexual exploration during their time at university. To date, little is known about the correlates of hypersexual behaviours among university students in the UK. Therefore, the aims of this exploratory study were two-fold. Firstly, to explore and establish the correlates of hypersexual behaviours, and secondly, to investigate whether hypersexuality among university students can be predicted by variables relating to negative mood states (i.e., emotional dysregulation, loneliness, shame, and life satisfaction) and consequences of hypersexual behaviour. Methods: Survey data from 165 British university students was analysed using regression analyses. Results: The full regression model significantly predicted hypersexual behaviours. However, only a small number of predictor variables (i.e., gender, consequences of hypersexual behaviours, life satisfaction and emotional dysregulation) accounted for the significant unique influence on hypersexual behaviours among the sample. Conclusions: The study empirically supported the concept of hypersexual disorder. The implications of these findings are also discussed

Clinical psychology of Internet addiction: a review of its conceptualization, prevalence, neuronal processes, and implications for treatment

Research into Internet addiction (IA) has grown rapidly over the last decade. The topic has generated a great deal of debate, particularly in relation to how IA can be defined conceptually as well as the many methodological limitations. The present review aims to further elaborate and clarify issues that are relevant to IA research in a number of areas including: definition and characterization, incidence and prevalence rates, associated neuronal processes, and implications for treatment, prevention, and patient-specific considerations. It is concluded that there is no consensual definition for IA. Prevalence rates among nationally representative samples across several countries vary greatly (from 1% to 18.7%), most likely reflecting the lack of methodological consistency and conceptual rigor of the studies. The overlaps between IA and other more traditional substance-based addictions and the possible neural substrates implicated in IA are also highlighted. In terms of treatment and prevention, both psychological and pharmacological treatments are examined in light of existing evidence alongside particular aspects inherent to the patient perspective. Based on the evidence analyzed, it is concluded that IA may pose a serious health hazard to a minority of people

Internet addiction and loneliness among children and adolescents in the education setting: an empirical pilot study

Research into various behavioural addictions has shown that such behaviour can negatively impact psychological wellbeing. One behavioural addiction that has been increasingly studied empirically is that of Internet Addiction (IA). Despite general consensus concerning the negative effects of IA on mental health and other indices of physical and psychosocial health, little research has been done in child and adolescent populations in specific contexts. The main objectives of this study were to (i) investigate the extent of problems caused by IA in children and adolescents, (ii) determine the socio-demographic and behavioural characteristics of children and adolescents with IA, and (iii) to provide a model capable of predicting IA in the educational context among the target population. A total of 131 Portuguese school children and adolescents participated in this study. Results indicated a relatively high incidence of IA in the sample (13%). Additionally, the correlational analyses revealed associations between IA and loneliness, social loneliness, and other variables related to the educational context. Results demonstrated that IA could be predicted using a model encompassing three variables (i.e., weekly Internet usage, loneliness, and classroom behaviour). Overall, the present findings corroborated results from other studies and added to the behavioural addiction literature by examining a younger cohort than previous empirical studies

The development and psychometric properties of the Internet Disorder Scale – Short Form (IDS9-SF)

Previous research has emphasized the need to improve the psychometric assessment of Internet addiction (IA); however, little research has been conducted to address inconsistencies in the instrumentation used for this purpose. Therefore, the aim of this study was to develop a new instrument to assess IA based on the nine Internet Gaming Disorder (IGD) criteria as suggested by the American Psychiatric Association in the latest edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) and further explore its psychometric properties according to several statistical parameters. A convenience sample of 1,100 participants was recruited from various online forums. Construct validity of the Internet Disorder Scale– Short Form (IDS9-SF) was assessed by means of factorial and nomological validity. Concurrent and criterion validity, as well as reliability were also investigated. At the construct validity level, the results from different analyses confirmed the validity of the scale. Additionally, strong empirical evidence was obtained for the concurrent and criterion validity of the scale. Taken together, these findings support the viability of using the nine IGD criteria as outlined by the APA in the DSM-5 to assess the construct of IA in a parsimonious and uniform fashion

Validation of the online political engagement scale in a British population survey

Over the last decade, there has been an ever increasing number of citizens using online media to participate in and engage with politics. Social media sites and online blogs have enabled new opportunities for interactive and user-centered political experiences. Currently, there is a general scarcity of psychometrically validated and standardized instruments that assess politically-related constructs (e.g., political engagement, political participation) in the field of political sciences. The main aim of the present study was to develop a standardized psychometric tool to assess online political engagement among the general population that is valid and reliable. The present study examined the psychometric properties of a 7-item Online Political Engagement Scale (OPEnS) that assesses various online political actions people engage with during election campaigns. To develop the scale, data from the 2010 British Election Survey were used, and a total of 3,075 people participated in an online survey, post-election. The main findings obtained in the present study supported the undimensionality of the online political engagement construct given the results obtained from exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. The OPEnS appears to be a valid and reliable instrument for assessing this phenomenon, and may be useful in studies investigating newer patterns of online political engagement and disengagement

Individual differences and the development of Internet addiction

Internet addiction (IA) has emerged as a universal issue, but its international estimates vary due to different screening instruments and different samples. The present study aims to estimate the risk of IA in a school-based nationally representative sample of Slovenian adolescents and ascertain the interplay between IA, sociodemographic factors, free-time activities, self-control, and perceived satisfaction with life. Overall, the present study found that adolescents at greater risk for developing IA tend to be more passive in their free time, since they watch TV and play video games more than their peers, as well as chat on social media. Adolescents presenting high risk of IA displayed poorer levels of self-control in most cases and reported to be generally less satisfied with their lives in comparison to adolescents presenting low risk of IA

A Multilingual Study of Compressive Cross-Language Text Summarization

Cross-Language Text Summarization (CLTS) generates summaries in a language different from the language of the source documents. Recent methods use information from both languages to generate summaries with the most informative sentences. However, these methods have performance that can vary according to languages, which can reduce the quality of summaries. In this paper, we propose a compressive framework to generate cross-language summaries. In order to analyze performance and especially stability, we tested our system and extractive baselines on a dataset available in four languages (English, French, Portuguese, and Spanish) to generate English and French summaries. An automatic evaluation showed that our method outperformed extractive state-of-art CLTS methods with better and more stable ROUGE scores for all languages

The role of age, age of Internet access initiation, and time spent online in the etiology of Internet addiction [abstract]

Background and Aims: A relatively large body of studies reported bivariate associations between sociodemographic variables (e.g., age), intensity of internet usage (e.g., hours spent online) and internet addiction (IA). However, only few actually employed more robust statistical approaches (e.g., path analysis) to understand these complex relationships and their possible causal pathways. In the present study, a full structural equation modelling (SEM) model using year of first use of the internet and hours of internet usage per week as mediators of the relationship between age and IA was devised. Methods: A total of 1,105 internet users (Mage= 33; S.D. = 12.31), 36.7% (n = 405) from the US, 30.4% (n = 336) from India, 24.6% (n = 272) from the UK, and 8.3% (n = 92) from other countries were recruited online. In addition to collecting sociodemographic information, participants filled out a newly developed brief measure of IA based on the DSM-5 criteria. Results: After analyzing the full SEM model, partial mediation presented the best overall fit for the data (Satorra-Bentler scaled Δχ2 = 114,62; Δdf = 1; p < .0001), with year of first use of the internet and the hours per week spent surfing mediating the relationship between age and IA. Furthermore, the present model accounted for 18% of the variability in IA. Conclusions: Although diagnosing IA on grounds of non-standardized criteria is not correct from a methodological standpoint, the variables here analyzed may play an important role in the development of IA