Development of the game addiction inventory for adults (GAIA) (2014)

This study describes the development of the Game Addiction Inventory for Adults (GAIA). First, a pool of 147 video game addiction-related items was generated from interviews with 25 people who have had experience with video game addiction and a literature review. Next, an online survey of 456 adult-aged video game players drawn from university students and participants of online video game web sites provided data for reduction of the item pool and examination of the factor structure of the pool using common factor analysis. Finally, a correlational analysis was conducted between the factor solution and associated variables. The GAIA consists of five addiction-related subscales: loss of control and consequences, agitated withdrawal, coping, mournful withdrawal, and shame; and a 26-item overall addiction subscale was produced by summing these five factors. In addition, an engagement subscale was also developed from the factor analytic process and was found to be quantitatively and qualitatively different from the addiction related subscales. The subscales of the GAIA demonstrated good internal consistency, good convergent validity, and concurrent validity with other measures of video game addiction. The GAIA demonstrated mixed discriminant validity with pathological gambling and substance addictions. Future research should continue to investigate the psychometric properties of the GAIA and the utility of its subscales in research and clinical settings.