Abstract
The Electronic Gaming Motives Questionnaire (EGMQ) assesses motives for engaging in video gaming, which are important to understanding risk for problem gaming and related harms. Only limited research has validated the EGMQ and examined its applicability across demographic subgroups (i.e., invariance). To this end, the present study evaluated the psychometric properties, including measurement invariance, of the EGMQ. Participants (N = 332) were Canadian adults reporting past-year gaming, recruited from an online crowdsourcing platform. Participants completed measures assessing demographic characteristics, gaming behaviours (motives, time spent, games played, problems), and psychological risk factors for problem gaming (e.g., boredom proneness, impulsivity). Confirmatory factor analysis supported a four-factor structure of the EGMQ, including coping, enhancement, social, and self-gratification motive factors. The EGMQ demonstrated configural, metric, and scalar invariance by age, sex, and employment status. Factors were differentially associated with several psychological risk factors for problem gaming, supporting convergent validity of the EGMQ. Concurrent validity was also supported by differential associations of the factors with various gaming-related outcomes, with coping motives associated with the greatest gaming engagement and problem gaming severity. Findings suggest that the EGMQ has good psychometric properties and can be administered to participants from different demographic groups. The EGMQ may be used in future research to understand how coping, enhancement, social, and self-gratification motives for gaming may differentially confer risk for problem gaming and related harms.
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Data Availability
Data, materials, and code will be made available upon request to the corresponding author and with approval from the York University Research Ethics Board.
Notes
Race/ethnicity was categorized as White and non-White due to most participants identifying as White and thus low sample sizes in non-White subgroups.
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This research was funded by a Junior Faculty Research Grant awarded to Drs. Keough and Wardell.
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SGC: writing – original draft, writing – review & editing; BA: conceptualization, writing – original dradt; EVR: writing – review & editing; KKR: writing – review & editing; HSK: writing – review & editing; JDW: funding acquisition, conceptualization, writing – review & editing; MTK: funding acquisition, conceptualization, formal analysis, writing – review & editing, supervision. All authors had full access to the data in the present study and take responsibility for the integrity of the data and accuracy of the data analysis. All authors have reviewed and approved the final version of the manuscript.
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Coelho, S.G., Aguiar, B., Ritchie, E.V. et al. Examining the psychometric properties of the electronic gaming motives questionnaire in a sample of Canadian adults: a replication and extension study. Curr Psychol 43, 11742–11753 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-023-05266-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-023-05266-w