The study involved contacting female psychology students through email who had attended a northern university between the years of 2009 and …show more content…
The four-item CAGE scale that is used for alcohol use was also modified for tanning and refers to, “attempts to Cut down on tanning, feeling Annoyed when told to not do a behavior, feeling Guilty when doing the behavior too much and wanted to engage in the behavior first thing in the morning (Eye-opener)” To meet tanning dependence in the CAGE scale two or more items out of four would have to be chosen. The last measure of tanning dependence that was used was from the 16-item Tanning Pathology Scale (TAPS). TAPS also has four subscales which is, perceives tanning as a problem, opiate-like reactions to tanning, tolerance to tanning and dissatisfaction with skin tone. The TAPS items included, “Sometimes I think my tanning is out of control”, “I feel tranquil after a tanning session”, “I wish I had been born with a darker shade of skin” and so on. When answering the items the participants had response options that “utilized a 5-poiny Likert-type scale of agreement (1 = strong disagree, 5 = strongly agree) and item responses are summed for each subscale” (Heckman et al., 2013). Results revealed that the internal