Interruptions caused by frequent smartphone use steals attention away from
daily activities, bringing serious implications onto an individual’s health, safety
and education. Smartphone Use Questionnaire (SUQ) is a 20-item questionnaire
developed to assess the pattern of smartphone use and its effect on attention. This
study was done to translate and validate the Malay-language version of the SUQ
and to measure the psychometric properties of the Malay-version SUQ to justify
its use in Malaysia. A forward and back-translation was done by four individuals,
who were three physicians and one linguist. Content and face validity was done
involving three experts who were a linguist, psychiatrist and epidemiologist.
Psychometric testing was conducted on a sample of 195 individuals proficient in
the Malay language. A construct validity test was performed using factor analysis
and the internal reliability was tested by calculating for the Cronbach’s Alpha. The
age range of the sample was 13-59 years, most of which were female and of the
Malay race. Using principal component analysis with direct oblimin rotation, the
factor analysis extracted two components similar to the original study: General
Use and Absent-Minded Use. However, question number 20 was grouped into
General Use component, whereas in the original study it was under the Absent-Minded Use component. The Cronbach’s Alpha for the obtained components was
0.884 and 0.927, respectively. This study found that the Malay-version SUQ was a
valid and reliable instrument for use in Malaysia in assessing inattention associated
with smartphone use