MEASURING MATERIALISM IN ADOLESCENTS: A STUDY OF THE PSYCHOMETRIC PROPERTIES OF THE LONG AND SHORT MATERIAL VALUES SCALE AMONG ITALIAN YOUTH

Materialism is defined as the importance ascribed to the ownership and acquisition of material goods in achieving major life goals or desired states. Nowadays, material possessions seem function as symbols of identity and self-expression, especially among adolescents. Several studies showed that materialism is related to risky behaviors in adolescents, such as gambling behavior, problematic smartphone use, and technology addiction. Nevertheless, nowadays there is a lack of measurement tools with adequate psychometric properties to assess materialism in adolescents. For this reason, the aim of the present study was to investigate the psychometric properties of the Material Values Scale (MVS; Richins & Dawson, 1998) among Italian adolescents. Participants (N = 2112; 57% male; Mage = 16.30; SD = 1.09) were randomly split into two groups. In the first sample (N = 1054; 58% males; Mage = 16.34; SD = 1.15), psychometric properties of the original long version were investigated; in the second sample (N = 1058; 57% males; Mage = 16.26; SD = 1.04), the short version of MVS with nine items, was analyzed. Reliability and validity analyses showed that the short version appears to have a better performance in measuring the multidimensional construct of materialism in adolescents.