Turkish validation of the internet addiction test-short form (IAT-7): psychometric properties and age-related differences

Abstract The lack of standardized diagnostic criteria hinders Internet addiction research by forcing reliance on varied measurement tools. The Internet Addiction Test (IAT) remains the most widely used tool for assessing this construct. This study examined the psychometric properties of the Turkish version of the Internet Addiction Test–Short Form (IAT-7) in a sample of 664 students, including 279 college and 385 high school students from Ankara and Erzincan, Türkiye. The findings supported the unidimensional structure of the IAT-7 in the combined sample, demonstrating strong structural validity and stable factorial representation across adolescent and emerging adult groups. The study findings revealed that internet addiction was positively correlated with smartphone addiction, internet gaming disorder, and difficulties in emotion regulation and negatively correlated with self-compassion among both high school students and college students. In addition, while there was a positive correlation between Internet addiction and loneliness among college students, there was no significant correlation between internet addiction and loneliness among high school students. Multi-group confirmatory factor analysis supported configural and metric invariance and partial scalar invariance across high school and college student samples. Cronbach’s alpha, McDonald’s omega, and test-retest correlation coefficients were computed to evaluate reliability. Overall, the Turkish IAT-7 is a reliable, valid, and culturally appropriate instrument for assessing Internet addiction among adolescents and college students, suitable for correlational, regression, and structural modeling applications in educational and research settings.