The Facebook Intensity Scale (FBI)

Abstract

The Facebook Intensity Scale (FBI) is a widely utilized psychological scale designed to measure the depth of an individual’s engagement with Facebook. Unlike simple metrics such as frequency or duration of use, the FBI incorporates items that capture the user’s emotional connectedness to the platform and the degree to which its use is integrated into their daily activities and routines. It is primarily employed in research concerning the implications of social media use for social connectivity and the maintenance of social capital.

Keywords

Facebook Intensity Scale, FBI, Social Networking Sites, Social Media Use, Social capital, Online communication, Emotional connection, User engagement.

Authors

Ellison, N. B., Steinfield, C., Lampe, C.

Purpose

The primary purpose of the Facebook Intensity Scale (FBI) is to provide a robust and nuanced measure of usage that moves beyond superficial quantitative assessments. By capturing the psychological and emotional investment users have in the platform, the FBI allows researchers to differentiate between passive use and intense, integrated usage. This intensity measure is crucial for investigating hypothesized relationships between social media engagement and psychological or sociological outcomes, such as the accrual of bridging and bonding social capital.

The scale is foundational to a body of subsequent research exploring specific behaviors on the platform, leading to the development of related measures like the Connection Strategies scales and the Facebook Relationship Maintenance Behaviors scale, all aimed at understanding how individuals leverage social media for relational purposes.

Construct

The FBI scale measures the construct of Facebook Intensity, defined as the subjective and objective integration of the Facebook platform into a user’s life. This construct is multidimensional, encompassing both attitudinal components (emotional reliance, sense of community belonging, perceived importance of the site) and behavioral components (frequency of use and total network size). High intensity scores indicate that an individual views Facebook as a vital part of their daily routine and identity, and experiences emotional consequences when disconnected from the service.

Later iterations and related scales further refine the measurement of platform engagement, such as the introduction of “Actual Friends,” which attempts to quantify the quality of the network rather than just its size, enhancing the utility of the original intensity construct in studies of interpersonal communication.

Validity

The FBI scale exhibits strong construct validity, evidenced by its consistent and significant use in predicting outcomes related to social capital and relational maintenance behaviors, particularly within college populations. The original 2007 publication established the scale’s ability to predict whether Facebook use was associated with increased bridging and bonding social capital. Its continued widespread adoption in communication and psychology literature serves as further evidence of its ecological and predictive validity in measuring core engagement with social networking platforms.

Reliability

Although specific psychometric data, such as Cronbach’s alpha for internal consistency, are typically detailed within the foundational journal article (Ellison et al., 2007), the FBI scale is generally regarded as having adequate reliability necessary for academic research. The consistency of the scale items, particularly the six Likert-type items focusing on emotional integration, contributes to a reliable measure of subjective intensity. Researchers are permitted to use the scale freely, provided correct attribution is maintained, suggesting confidence in its established measurement properties.

Factor Analysis

The initial Facebook Intensity Scale is conceptualized and typically utilized as a unidimensional measure of overall engagement. However, the scale is composed of two distinct item types: attitudinal items (1-6) and quantifiable behavioral items (7-8: friends count and time spent). Due to the inherent difference in measurement scales (Likert vs. open-ended/ordinal), the behavioral items often require logarithmic transformation before being averaged with the attitudinal items to form the final composite score. Subsequent studies have often treated the behavioral components (Total Friends and Minutes Per Day) separately or broken the FBI into its component parts, indicating that researchers often explore the scale’s underlying factors when conducting refined statistical analyses, such as curvilinear analyses.

Instrument

Test Type: Self-report psychological inventory and behavioral composite.

Format: 8-item composite scale. Items 1-6 use a 5-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree). Items 7 and 8 are demographic/usage items, which can be measured using open-ended questions or closed-ended ordinal scales, requiring data transformation (logarithmic) if open-ended responses are used.

Language Available: English (Original).

Population Group: Social Networking Site users; typically studied in college students and young adults.

Age Group: Primarily young adults (college age), but adaptable for broader adult populations.

Population Details: Originally validated using data collected from college students, specifically focusing on how they leverage the platform to build and maintain social connections.

Test Methodology: The final Facebook Intensity score is computed by calculating the mean of all eight items after standardizing or logarithmically transforming the behavioral items (friends count and time spent) to account for differing scale ranges.

Keywords

Intensity measurement, Emotional connection, Daily routine integration, Likert scale, Connection strategies, Relational investment, Computer-Mediated Communication.

Authors

Author ORCID Identifier: [Not provided in source]

Affiliation Email addresses: [Not provided in source]

Correspondence Address: [Not provided in source]

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Facebook Intensity Scale (FBI) was first published in 2007. The scale is available for use by researchers without fee, provided that proper academic attribution is used, citing the original 2007 article by Ellison, Steinfield, and Lampe.

Reference’s

Ellison, N. B., Steinfield, C., & Lampe, C. (2007). The benefits of Facebook ‘‘friends:’’ Social capital and college students’ use of online social network sites. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 12, 1143-1168.

Ellison, N.B., Steinfield, C., & Lampe, C. (2011). Connection strategies: Social capital implications of Facebook-enabled communication practices. New Media & Society, 13(6), 873-892. The full text of this article is available here.

Ellison, N. B., Vitak, J., Gray, R., & Lampe, C. (2014). This reference details the Facebook Relationship Maintenance Behaviors scale in JCMC, available HERE.

Items of the The Facebook Intensity Scale (FBI)

The following items constitute the original Facebook Intensity Scale (FBI) introduced in 2007:

• 1. Facebook is part of my everyday activity
• 2. I am proud to tell people I’m on Facebook
• 3. Facebook has become part of my daily routine
• 4. I feel out of touch when I haven’t logged onto Facebook for a while
• 5. I feel I am part of the Facebook community
• 6. I would be sorry if Facebook shut down
• 7. Approximately how many TOTAL Facebook friends do you have? *
• 8. In the past week, on average, approximately how much time PER DAY have you spent actively using Facebook?**

Response categories range from 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree for items 1-6, unless otherwise noted.

Item Notes:

*Item 7 (Total Facebook friends) can be asked as an open-ended or closed-ended question. If open-ended, the count must be transformed by taking the log before averaging across items to create the scale. If closed-ended, a ten-point ordinal scale may be used (e.g., 10 or less, 11–50, 51–100, etc.).

**Item 8 (Time spent per day) can be asked as an open-ended or closed-ended question. If open-ended, Facebook minutes should be measured and then transformed by taking the log before averaging across items. If closed-ended, an ordinal scale may be used (e.g., 1= 0-14 min, 2=15-29 min, etc.).

The Facebook Intensity score is computed by calculating the mean of all of the items in the scale after ensuring all necessary transformations are applied to items 7 and 8.