RESEARCH OF COMPUTER GAME ADDICTION AMONG THE 18-YEAR-OLD STUDENTS OF GENERAL UPPER SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN THE CZECH REPUBLIC

The article describes results of a research which was aimed to find out the presence of computer game addiction among the 18-year-old students of general upper secondary schools in the Czech Republic. In the research, a qualitative research strategy was used. A questionnaire was used as a research method while it was created by authors themselves based on criteria for the “Internet gaming disorder” according to DSM-5. Additionally, further possible manifestations and characteristics of behavior of an addicted student (addictive behavior). The questionnaire was handed out by the authors themselves in May 2016. It contained 34 questions with scale-based, dichotomic and open questions.

The research sample consisted of 525 students of third year of a four-year general upper secondary schools (or an equivalent year of a multi-year general upper secondary school) from 10 randomly chosen general upper secondary schools of Czech Republic regions of Olomouc, Zlín, Pardubice and Moravian-Silesian.

The first part of the research was an analysis of items of questionnaire related to a wider concept of addictive behavior of students. Based on this analysis, 2 basic groups of general upper secondary schools’ students were identified. It was discovered that these groups are roughly the same in terms of numerousness while they have different characteristics. In the second part of the research (which is described by this article) only the scale-based items of the questionnaire were analyzed – they were related to symptoms of the addictive behavior themselves among the students. It was found out that Czech students might be divided into four typical groups (clusters) which have different measure of addiction behavior. In a group (identified cluster no. 3), which shows the greatest measure of addictive behavior, there are approximately 8 per cent of all upper secondary schools’ students. On the other hand, in a group which shows almost no addiction (cluster no. 2), there are approximately 33 per cent of students. Additionally, also further typical qualities of identified groups of students were determined, e.g. sex of students (men’s overwhelming majority in the cluster no. 3 and women’s overwhelming majority in the cluster no. 2), preferred free-time activities (PC gaming in the cluster no. 3) or the average time devoted to the gaming a day (187 minutes a day in the cluster no. 3; 35 minutes in the cluster no. 2).

In the research we used the following result processing methods: K-means cluster analysis and globalized cluster analysis; the analysis of nominal data was performed by means of the Chi-square test of independence.

Acknowledgement:
The research was supported by project IGA_PdF_2016_028 “Identification of risks of social networks and computer games for children depending on their preferred use of information and communication technologies”.