Internet Gaming Disorder Scale-Short Form

IGDS9-SF

psychologyhealth sciencesFree for research use

Permission: Free for research use. Free for non-commercial academic research, with no license fee. Cite the original publication.

A 9-item scale assessing Internet Gaming Disorder against the nine DSM-5 criteria over the past 12 months.

Items

Response format

5-point frequency scale (1-5)

Version

1.0

Ready-to-cite methods sentence

Internet gaming disorder symptoms were measured with the IGDS9-SF (Pontes & Griffiths, 2015), a 9-item DSM-5-aligned scale with good internal consistency (α ≈ .87).

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Reliability & validation

Validation population

English-speaking gamers (Pontes & Griffiths, 2015)

Cronbach's α

0.87

Response anchors

Never · Rarely · Sometimes · Often · Very often

Known limitations

Maps to DSM-5's provisional criteria, which remain debated; it is a screening measure rather than a diagnosis, and prevalence estimates vary widely with the scoring method used.

Original citation

Pontes, H. M., & Griffiths, M. D. (2015). Measuring DSM-5 Internet Gaming Disorder: Development and validation of a short psychometric scale. Computers in Human Behavior, 45, 137-143.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2014.12.006

Questions researchers ask

What does the IGDS9-SF measure?

A 9-item scale assessing Internet Gaming Disorder against the nine DSM-5 criteria over the past 12 months.

How many items does the IGDS9-SF have?

The Internet Gaming Disorder Scale-Short Form (IGDS9-SF) has 9 items.

Is the IGDS9-SF free to use?

The IGDS9-SF is free to use for non-commercial academic research. You don't need to pay a license fee, but you should always cite the original publication.

Is the IGDS9-SF reliable?

Validation studies report Cronbach's α of 0.87. See the reliability section for the population studied and full statistics.

Who developed the IGDS9-SF, and how do I cite it?

Pontes, H. M., & Griffiths, M. D. (2015). Measuring DSM-5 Internet Gaming Disorder: Development and validation of a short psychometric scale. Computers in Human Behavior, 45, 137-143. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2014.12.006

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Library entry verified September 2026. Metadata is provided for reference. Questionnaires are built in Folio Surveyor, subject to each instrument's licensing, and can be taken to Qualtrics, Google Forms or Microsoft Forms, with their CSV responses brought back for scoring.