Perceived #Digital Well-Being Scale in the United States and United Kingdom: Psychometric Validation Study
Background: #Digital well-being encourages balanced mobile use. The Perceived #Digital Well-Being in Adolescence Scale (PDWBA) scale measures this in adolescents but was validated only in Slovenia, raising questions about its relevance for other age groups and cultural contexts. Objective: This study had three primary objectives: (1) to confirm the three-factor structure of an English version of the PDWBA—renamed the Perceived #Digital Well-being Scale (PDWS)—in samples of young adults from the United States (USA) and the United Kingdom (UK; (2) to examine the associations between PDWS dimensions and participants’ sociodemographic characteristics; and (3) to explore the relationships between PDWS scores and patterns of smartphone use. Methods: A total of 1,854 young adults from the USA and the UK (ages 18–25; M = 22.4, SD = 2.1); 892(48.1 %) female, 872(47.0 %) male, 90(4.9 %) non-binary participated in an online survey including the PDWS, #Digital flourishing and #Digital stress measures. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, confirmatory factor analysis, correlations, t-tests, chi-squared tests, and moderation-mediation analysis. Results: The smartphone screen time use and the smartphone time use for non-essential activities was statistically higher in the USA sample than in UK sample (M = 6.95 vs M = 6.13, t = 4.97, P
