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Development and validation of fear of missing out scale among Chinese college students

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Abstract

Fear of Missing Out (FoMO) is a common phenomenon among contemporary young people. It refers to negative emotions such as unease and anxiety that occur when young people think they miss out on beneficial things that others are doing or experiencing. This negative emotion harms individual behavior and physical and mental health. The FoMO instrument measures the fear of missing out in individuals. However, because of the cultural differences that influence the understood bias and the distinct structure of the psychological measurement, the existing FoMO scale cannot be used with Chinese college students. Therefore, this study aimed to develop a FoMO scale based on individual psychology, which would be suitable for localization in China, and to measure its reliability and validity. The newly developed fear of missing out scale (CFoMOs) contained 15 items, and 4 factors: missing motivation, missing cognition, missing emotion, and missing behaviors. An exploratory factor analysis revealed that the cumulative variance contribution rate was 65.22%. A confirmatory factor analysis showed that the CFoMOs had good construct validity (χ2/df = 1.93, TLI = .90, CFI = 0.95, RMSEA = 0.05). The Cronbach’s alpha coefficients of all subscales ranged from 0.73 to 0.79, the omega (ω) coefficients of all subscales ranged from 0.73 to 0.80, and the test-retest reliabilities were between 0.56 and 0.72. There was a significant moderate correlation between the subscales of the CFoMOs (r = 0.25–0.43, p < 0.01), and a significant positive correlation between each dimension and the total score (r = 0.64–0.72, p < 0.01). The CFoMOs had no significant difference based on sex and had metric invariance. Scores on the dimension of missing behavior and the total scale differed significantly, while the other dimensions had no significant difference based on the location of registered permanent residence. In the study, the CFoMOs had good reliability and validity.

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Data Availability

The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are not publicly available due to the first author is preparing his master’s thesis, this research is a part of the master’s thesis but is available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the participating students who voluntarily participated in the study.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Psychology, Fujian Normal University, Fuzhou, China

    Jian-ping Ma, Cong-xing Wang & Yiduo Ye

Authors
  1. Jian-ping Ma
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  2. Cong-xing Wang
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  3. Yiduo Ye
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Contributions

JM and CW developed the study concept. All authors contributed to the study design. Testing and data collection were performed by JM. JM performed the data analysis and interpretation under the supervision of YY. JM and CW drafted the manuscript, and YY provided critical revisions. All authors approved the final version of the manuscript for submission.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Yiduo Ye.

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Conflict of Interest

On behalf of all authors, the corresponding author states that there is no conflict of interest.

Ethical Approval

This project was approved by the Ethics Committee of Fujian Normal University.

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Appendix 1. The final 15-item version of the Fear of Missing out scale (CFoMOs)

Appendix 1. The final 15-item version of the Fear of Missing out scale (CFoMOs)

Here are some statements about your daily experience. Please use your own experience, rather than what you think to choose the number that best suits your situation.

Complete disagreement

Disagreement

Not necessarily

Agreement

Complete agreement

1

2

3

4

5

  1. .

    I want to know about other people’s experiences.

  2. .

    I want to take part in other people’s activities.

  3. .

    I want to know about other people’s plans.

  4. .

    I want to understand what other people mean by every word.

  5. .

    It is important for me to participate in other people’s conversations.

  6. .

    It's important for me to participate in other people’s social activities.

  7. .

    It is important for me to join a chat group of friends.

  8. .

    It is important for me not to lag behind others.

  9. .

    I feel nervous when I do the same task and my progress is slower than that of my peers.

  10. .

    Even if you think your peers can do it, you can do it yourself, but you will still be afraid of being different from others.

  11. .

    When I feel that my skills are not as good as others, I feel uneasy.

  12. .

    I often flip through other people’s moments, spaces or Weibo.

  13. .

    For newly added friends, I will check their moments, space or Weibo.

  14. .

    I often follow the latest news on social networking sites.

  15. .

    I often look at moments, space or Weibo.

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Ma, Jp., Wang, Cx. & Ye, Y. Development and validation of fear of missing out scale among Chinese college students. Curr Psychol 41, 8625–8634 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-021-01357-8

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