Title: The factors of internet addiction among the students during COVID-19 using logistic regression

Authors: Gift Mahlatse Mphahlele; Simon Setsweke Nkoane

Addresses: Department of Statistics and Operations Research, University of Limpopo, Sovenga, 0727, South Africa ' Department of Statistics and Operations Research, University of Limpopo, Sovenga, 0727, South Africa

Abstract: In this study, the purpose is to investigate the factors on internet addiction (IA) amongst the students at the University of Limpopo (UL) in South Africa (SA) in the 2020 academic year during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. The internet played an important role in tertiary education especially during a COVID-19 pandemic. Despite the fact that the internet plays an important role in our lifetime, its usage can be addictive. Logistic regression (LR) is used to investigate the relationship between the IA as a categorical dependent variable and factors include gender, age, hours spent online, most online activities and the place of accommodation as the multiple independent variables. The likelihood ratio test (LRT) and the Wald test are used to evaluate the fitted LR model. The results show that there is a significant relationship between IA, and the student's gender, time spent online, and online activities. However, on the contrary, one may argue that during this time of COVID-19 the factors such as time spent online and online activities are not necessarily contributing factors as the situation forces everyone to use online facilities.

Keywords: internet addiction; IA; students; online teaching and learning; logistic regression; LR; likelihood ratio test; LRT; tertiary education; face-to-face contact; COVID-19 pandemic; internet; technology; time spent online; online activities.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMCP.2024.135089

International Journal of Management Concepts and Philosophy, 2024 Vol.17 No.1, pp.22 - 33

Received: 11 Jan 2023
Accepted: 13 Jan 2023
Published online: 30 Nov 2023 *