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Internet Addiction Questionnaire

The following is a message that was posted to the Psychology of the Internet mailing list in July 1996. It's a good example of the early attempts to itemize the various cognitive, affective, and behavioral components of excessive internet use. Any psychological questionnaire reflects the theoretical background, culture, and personality dynamics of the people who create it.

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Hi!!

We're some curious students from Giessen/Germany. We are studying psychology, and we are interested in the way you use the internet, this new media. Therefor we've developed a questionnaire, which, we hope, will help us to get some informations about it. This questionnaire will also appear in some german news groups, to enable a comparison between german and american net behaviour ( if we can manage it, we will publish our results in the same place , later this year). So, if you want to answer some questions, start right here!

You don't have to think about it too hard or too long, there are (of course) no correct or incorrect answers, and the best of all are those, who come spontaneously. That's for now; if you got any questions, mail us:

Christina M. Kappeller@psychol.uni-giessen.de or Marco Thomas@psychol.uni-giessen.de

And for now have some fun with our weird questions.

age:
sex: m f
personal status:
occupation:
student: yes: no:
if yes, what are you studying?

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I'm using the internet since............years

1. How many hours do you spend for surfing in one week?________

2. Do you pay attention to advantageous times (in regard of the tariff), when you are using the net? [...]yes [...]no

3. How long does the account exist, which you are using? [...]yes [...]no

4. Did you increase the time you spend in the internet, since the time you started to now? [...]yes [...]no

5. Which sectors of the net do you make use of?
[...]Newsgroups [...]IRC [...]Chat [...]email [...]information-seeking

6. Are you member of a mailing list? [...]yes [...]no

7. Do you use internet for professional matter also? [...]yes [...]no

8. I often spend more time in internet as I actual want. [...]yes [...]no

9. The internet offers me the possibolity to get information from all over the world in an easy and fast way. [...]yes [...]no

10. Sometimes I'surfing in the net althoug there are more important things to manage. [...]yes [...]no

11. When I left the net after a few hours I want to go back surfing after a real short time. [...]yes [...]no

12. I like communication via internet, because you are allways confrontrate with a large number of various opinions. [...]yes [...]no

13. I've got backaches and similar aches because of too much time sitting in front of the computer. [...]yes [...]no

14. I canceled/postponed a date because I wanted to spend more time in the net. [...]yes [...]no

15. Most of the time, I'm using the internet for scintific business. [...]yes [...]no

16. Often, friends, my partner or my family become angry about too much surfing. [...]yes [...]no

17. Internet is a giant funfair with thousands of possibilities, which have to be used. [...]yes [...]no

18. With surfing, I can forget my daily problems. [...]yes [...]no

19. Sometimes I tried to reduce the time I spend for surfing. [...]yes [...]no

If yes: --because of my telephone bill [..]yes [..]no
--in order to prevent burning eyes [..]yes [..]no

20. I've met interesting people throug surfing. [...]yes [...]no

21. You are in totally different world, when you are in the net, which leads you away from the daily round. [...]yes [...]no

22. The internet offers you a huge quantity of information, but you just can't use it in an positiv way because of ist chaotic structur. [...]yes [...]no

See also in The Psychology of Cyberspace:

To Get What You Need: Healthy and Pathological Internet Use

Cold Turkey: Messages from an Ex-Palace "Addict"

Why is This Thing Eating My Life? (computer and cyberspace addiction at the Palace)

Computer and Cyberspace Addiction

An interview with John Suler about internet addiction

Internet Addiction Disorder Support Group

Internet Addiction in a Nutshell

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your comments on this article are welcome

back to the Psychology of Cyberspace home page

www.rider.edu/users/suler/psycyber/psycyber.html