Objective To understand the association between excessive screen viewing time and personality characteristics in adolescents and to provide a basis to evolve effective intervention measures.
Methods Four middle schools were randomly selected from two districts of Shanghai. All of the students in Grade Six and Seven were interviewed by the Questionnaires of Behavior Patterns Relating to Obesity in Shanghai Middle School Students and Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (Adolescents). SPSS 18.0 software was used to perform statistical analysis.
Results A total of 1 722 valid questionnaires were returned. The proportion of having excessive screen viewing time was 57.4% for the boys and 53.3% for the girls. The highest proportion was found in the students of 13 years old (56.8%). The data of four personality dimensions including psychoticism, introversion, neuroticism, and lie didn't fit normal distribution, and gender specific differences were identified among the five grades of psychoticism, introversion, and lie (all P<0.01). By controlling age and gender, neuroticism showed an association with the excessive screen viewing time (equal to or greater than 2 h) (OR=1.163, P<0.05), and both psychoticism and neuroticism showed associations with the excessive screening viewing time (equal to or greater than 4 h) (OR=1.233, P<0.01 and OR=1.142, P<0.05, respectively).
Conclusion Longer excessive screen viewing time potentially associates with dimensions of personality characteristics including psychoticism and neuroticism.
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