Commentary on Karhulahti et al. (2022): addressing ontological diversity in gaming disorder measurement from an item-based psychometric perspective

Abstract The present commentary aims to extend the work conducted by Karhulahti et al. (2022), and more specifically to follow one of the research directions that they suggested but did not preregister, that is, to capitalize on network analysis (an item-based psychometric approach) to reinforce or – in contrast – to nuance the view that the four gaming disorder measurement tools that they scrutinized actually assess ontologically distinct constructs. Thanks to the open science approach endorsed by Karhulahti and colleagues, we were able to perform network analysis that encompassed all items from the four gaming disorder assessment tools used by the authors. Because of the very high density of connections among all available items, the analysis conducted suggests that these instruments are not reliably distinct and that their content strongly overlaps, therefore measuring substantially homogeneous constructs after all. Although not aligned with the main conclusions made by Karhulahti and colleagues, the current exploratory results make sense theoretically and require further elaboration of what is meant by ‘ontological diversity’ in the context of gaming disorder assessment and diagnosis.