Objective  To revise the Smartphone Addiction Proneness Scale (SAPS) – Chinese Version for Adolescents and to evaluate the reliability and validity of the revised scale.

  Methods  Totally 2 572 students of grade one and two (1 292 boys and 1 272 girls aged 14.00 ± 1.68 years) were recruited at 9 junior and senior high schools in urban and rural regions of 4 provinces across China for a questionnaire survey. The participants were asked to complete SAPS, Smartphone Addiction Scale – Short Version (SAS-SV) and Barratt Impulsiveness Scale – Short Form (BIS-15) on line or on site and a test-retest evaluation was conducted among 204 of the participants two months after the initial survey.

  Results  Based on exploratory factor analysis, three items in SAS-SV were deleted and the revised SAPS consists of three factors: disturbance of adaptive function, withdrawal, and tolerance. The confirmatory factor analysis indicated that the revised three-factor SAPS was of better fitting than the four-factor SAS-SV, with the fitting index of χ²/df = 2.577, root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) of 0.035, and comparative fit index (CFI) of 0.989. The total score and factor scores of SAPS were significantly correlated with those of SAS-SV and BIS-15, suggesting a good criterion validity of the revised SAPS. The internal consistency reliability of the revised SAPS is 0.812 and the test-retest reliability is 0.66. With the revised SAPS, 27.4% of the students were assessed as having smartphone addiction and the detection rate of smarphoe addiction was higher among senior high school students than among the junior high school students.

  Conclusion  The revised SAPS – Chinese Version is a reliable and valid tool for evaluating smartphone addiction in adolescents.