Scales for measuring user engagement with social network sites: A systematic review of psychometric properties

In the past decade, various scales have been developed for measuring engagement with social network sites (SNS), but validity concerns have recently been raised about some of them. The present study thus provides a systematic review of the psychometric properties of these scales. This review included articles that aimed at either developing an SNS engagement scale or providing a systematic test of the psychometric properties of the scale. We conducted keyword-based searches of several broad multidisciplinary databases, along with reference list searches and article citation searches. These search strategies yielded a total of 14 reports, revealing validation evidence for 12 SNS engagement scales among 13,861 participants from 11 countries. There was mixed evidence for the various types of validity tests, with some scales having been validated more rigorously with multiple studies and samples while others having not yet been systematically validated. Sampling and acquiescence biases were also present for some scales. The present review provides recommendations for researchers intending to study SNS engagement. Although the literature search was multi-faceted, it may conceivably have missed studies that provided less rigorous validity evidence. Overall, this study contributes to evaluating and strengthening the methodological foundations of SNS research.