Who took part in the study?
The study included 4,289 adolescents. The researchers said this group represented the larger ABCD Study sample.
- About 56% were male and 44% were female. One participant’s gender information was missing.
- By race and ethnicity, about 2% were Asian, 11% were Black, 21% were Hispanic, and 56% were White. These categories do not add up to everyone in the study, so some participants were in other categories or had missing information.
What did the study find about household income?
Income information was available for 3,877 households. The largest reported income group was $100,000 to $199,000 a year, which included 1,374 households, or about 35%.
How were the data distributed?
Many measurements were right-skewed. This means that most participants had relatively low or typical scores, while a smaller number had much higher scores. This pattern was expected because the study included a general group of adolescents, rather than only people receiving treatment for serious problems. Researchers changed the scale of most skewed measurements using a method called a log transformation, which can make the data easier to analyze.
Four measurements—gaming disorder (GD), ADHD symptoms, family conflict, and impulsivity—were close enough to a bell-shaped pattern to meet the researchers’ normality requirements.
How did researchers compare the measurements?
Because most measurements were not normally distributed, the researchers used Spearman correlations. This is a way to check whether two things tend to change together, without requiring the data to follow a bell-shaped pattern.
The measures of mental-health and behavioral difficulties were moderately to strongly related to one another. Their correlation values ranged from 0.30 to 0.79. In general, a higher value means a stronger relationship. A correlation shows that two measurements are connected, but it does not prove that one causes the other.
What else was reported?
The study’s descriptive statistics included information about how much participants played video games and their risk of gaming disorder. More details and additional analyses were available in the study’s online supplemental materials.