A scale development study to measure smartphone satisfactions of adolescents

Abstract

Smartphones are the most popular technological devices which enable the users to do multiple things at once such as connecting Internet, gaming, messaging, e-mailing and taking photographs in one device. In recent years, there has been a substantial rise in the sales of smartphones and the average age of their owners and replacement cycle have decreased. In this context, it is important to determine the motives and reasons why people replace their smartphones by spending high budgets and smartphone satisfactions of the users when purchasing the new ones. The aim of this study which derived from the importance of customer satisfaction is to develop a scale determining the smartphone satisfaction of adolescents between the ages of 15 and 22. In scale developing process, an item pool consisted of 46 items was constituted as a result of the compositions written by the participants and literature review. Pre-test of the draft scale was conducted with 70 students after the review of 7 field experts. In the pilot phase of study, exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was carried out through the data obtained from 716 students in order to perform construct validity. The draft scale consisted of 42 items before EFA turned into single factor structure scale consisted of 22 items after the analysis to determine the smartphone satisfactions of adolescents. Cronbach's Alfa (alpha) internal consistency of 5-point Likert-type scale was .932 and explained total variance was 39.360 %. In order to confirm factor structure as a result of EFA, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was carried out with 316 participants. All the indicators revealed that the single factor structure smartphone satisfaction scale at ideal levels by means of modification indices was valid and reliable, and it could be used in order to identify the smartphone satisfactions of adolescents in further studies.