Background: Materialism is an attitude that considers material goods to be central in life. Nowadays, adolescents appear to have a high level of materialism, which is related to risky behaviors. Nevertheless, there is a lack of measurement tools with adequate psychometric properties to assess materialism in this age group. For this reason, two studies were conducted to investigate the psychometric properties of the original and short Material Values Scale (MVS) in adolescents. Methods: In Study 1, participants were randomly split into two subsamples to compare psychometric properties of the original version of MVS with those of the short one. The first subsample consisted of 1054 adolescents (58% male; Mage = 16.34; SD = 1.15), and the second one of 1058 adolescents (57% male; Mage = 16.26; SD = 1.04). In Study 2, the psychometric properties of a revised version of the short MVS (without item 8) were investigated to confirm its adequacy with a new sample composed of 1896 adolescents (60% male; Mage = 16.40; SD = 2.76). Results: Results of Study 1 showed that the short version appeared to be a better measuring tool with respect to the long form to investigate materialism in adolescents. Nevertheless, problems with item 8 emerged. Results of Study 2 attested to the adequacy of the psychometric properties of the revised version of the short MVS (by excluding item 8) in this age group, in terms of dimensionality, reliability, and validity. Conclusions: Findings show that the revised short version of the MVS could be a valid and reliable tool for measuring the multidimensional construct of materialism in Italian adolescents.
Keywords: adolescents; dimensionality; material values scale—short form; materialism; risky behaviors; validity.