Development and Validation of Indigenous Gamophobia Scale for Pakistani Population

An exploratory sequential mixed-methods research design was used to construct a statistically sound tool to measure the extent of Gamophobia in Pakistani adults, as existing scales are based on a Western context and cannot be adopted locally. A six-step process was followed. Firstly, the initial item pool was generated through a focus group discussion, semi-structured interviews, and current literature. Secondly, an expert review was conducted to maintain content validity, resulting in the retention of 22 items. The third step consists of a pilot study and cognitive debriefing to assess item comprehension. A sample of 300 (M= 34.56, SD = 6.97) was selected via purposive sampling from the target population to establish construct validity through exploratory factor analysis (EFA), which produced a three-factor structure with subscales: Interpersonal Vulnerability, Anticipatory Panic, and Existential Dread, resulting in the elimination of 3 more items. A Confirmatory Factor Analysis was conducted to confirm the established factor structure, yielding acceptable results. After that, Psychometric properties were established, in which reliability was established via Cronbach’s alpha, which was .96; convergent and divergent validity were assessed by the Composite Reliability (CR) and Average Variance Extracted (AVE) indices computed via a macro-enabled Validity Master worksheet within the Stats Tools Package (Gaskin & Lim, 2018). Convergent validity was demonstrated across all dimensions, as the CR for all factors exceeded the threshold of .70 (Hair et al., 1997). The AVEs exceeded the .50 cut-off (Fornell & Larcker, 1981), confirming convergent validity.