Tropical Journal of Pharmaceutical Research

Original Research Article | OPEN ACCESS

Correlation between mobile phone addiction tendency and its related risk factor among Chinese college students: A cross-sectional study

Wei Pan , Xiaoyu Chen, Fangfang Ji, Man Chen, Jing Lu

School of Medical Business, Guangdong Pharmaceutical University, Guandong, China;

For correspondence:- Wei Pan Email: kl12757@126.com Tel:+8619293805555

Accepted: 12 July 2020 Published: 31 August 2021

Citation: Pan W, Chen X, Ji F, Chen M, Lu J. Correlation between mobile phone addiction tendency and its related risk factor among Chinese college students: A cross-sectional study. Trop J Pharm Res 2021; 20(8):1729-1737 doi: 10.4314/tjpr.v20i8.26

© 2021 The authors.
This is an Open Access article that uses a funding model which does not charge readers or their institutions for access and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0) and the Budapest Open Access Initiative (http://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/read), which permit unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited..

Abstract

Purpose: Mobile phone addiction prevalence is a global concern which has attracted great attention. It is now considered that excessive mobile phone usage is associated with potentially harmful and/or disturbing behaviors. The present study was aimed at exploring the current situation and related factors of mobile phone addiction tendency and providing a scientific suggestion for its prevention among college students.

Methods: A cross-sectional study was applied for stratified cluster random sampling among college students, including five survey tools: the basic information questionnaire, UCLA loneliness scale, college students’ interpersonal comprehensive diagnostic scale, the Pittsburgh sleep quality index scale and mobile phone addiction tendency scale (MPATS). SPSS v 17.0 statistical tool was applied to analyze data from the survey.

Results: A total of 760 questionnaires were administered of which 735 questionnaires were retrieved and the valid questionnaires were 730. Classification of mobile phone addiction tendency has statistical significance with grade. Also, classification of loneliness has statistical significance with major, grade and home address. Furthermore, classification of interpersonal relationship has statistical significance with romance status and grade. Additionally, classification of MPATS was positively correlated with classification of UCLA loneliness scale, Pittsburgh sleep quality index scale and interpersonal relationship scale. Interpersonal relationship, sleep quality, and loneliness were linearly correlated with mobile phone addiction tendency.

Conclusion: Grade, interpersonal relationship, sleep quality and loneliness were positively correlated with mobile phone addiction tendency, which are the associated risk factors. Therefore, concerns and interventions are required to decrease the risk factor for the sake of college students’ health.

Keywords: College students, Interpersonal relationship, Loneliness, Mobile phone addiction tendency, Sleep quality