Game Addiction Scale for Adolescents

The Game Addiction Scale for Adolescents (GASA) has seven items reflecting the six core addiction (salience, mood modification, tolerance, withdrawal symptoms, conflict, and relapse) components (28) as well as one item related to problems generated by gaming. The response alternatives range from “never” (1) to “very often” (5). According to the instructions, the responses should reflect experiences and behavior during the last 6 months (29). A common approach to identify problem gamers based on GASA is to categorize those scoring 3 or more (i.e., “sometimes” or more often) on 3–6 items as problem video gamers and those scoring 3 or more on all seven items as addicted to video games. In the present study, Cronbach's alpha for the GASA was 0.85, 0.86, and 0.87 for the survey conducted in 2013, 2015, and 2019, respectively.