The Development and Validation of Measurement Scales of Upward State Social Comparison on Social Media

TL;DR

This paper introduces and validates new scales to measure upward social comparisons on social media and their impact on psychological well-being.

Contribution

The paper provides specific measurement recommendations and validated scales for assessing upward state social comparison.

Findings

A 4-item scale for ability-based assimilative upward state social comparison showed good reliability and validity.

A 4-item scale for ability-based contrastive upward state social comparison also demonstrated strong psychometric properties.

Abstract

In the literature of social media use, upward state social comparison, and psychological well-being, there are multiple issues on how upward state social comparison is measured. Although researchers have pointed out these measurement issues, existing research has not provided specific measurement recommendations or measurement scales to address them. In this paper, we offered multiple specific recommendations on how to measure upward state social comparison, and we also developed measurement scales. Lastly, in a validation study, we validated the measurement scales we developed in a sample of young adult social media users in the U.S. The final sample size was 462 participants, with ages ranging from 18 to 42 years old, (Mage = 19.75, SDage = 2.09), and the gender distribution was 349 females (75.54%), 105 males (22.73%), four participants identifying with other genders (0.87%), and four participants preferring not to reveal their gender (0.87%). Results of the validation study showed that a 4-item scale of measuring ability-based assimilative upward state social comparison and a 4-item scale of measuring ability-based contrastive upward state social comparison demonstrated good reliability, convergent validity, divergent validity, and predictive validity. Therefore, in this paper, we offered promising suggestions and tools to solve multiple measurement issues of upward state social comparison.