In recent years, there has been an expansion in communication technologies what leads to the creation of devices that facilitate human interactions. People tend to prefer smartphones to computers when it comes to online communication and these devices have become an integral part of people's daily lives. These devices provide opportunities for users to connect with friends, family and others people (Andreassen & Pabelleen, 2014) to play (Mérelle, et. al, 2017; Kurt, Dogan, Erdogmus & Emiroglu, 2018), have entertainment or use it within  the educational field (Doleck & Lajoie, 2018), and also with research aims (Götz, Stieger, Reips, 2017). 

However, despite the undoubted benefits of smartphones, researchers have become increasingly concerned about their potential adverse effects on mental and physical health (Estévez, Urbiola, Iruarrizaga, Onaindia & Jauregui, 2017) and the quality of social interactions (Bernal, Rosa-Alcázar, González-Calatayud & Rosa-Alcázar, 2017). Just as many people have become addicted to the Internet (Savci & Aysan, 2017), more and more people are becoming problematic smartphone users, triggering concern about the possible consequences of its excessive use (Wolniewicz, Tiamiyu, Weeks & Elhai, 2018). In particular, the phubbing concept, defined by Chotpitayasunondh & Douglas (2016) "as the act of snubbing others in social interactions and instead focusing on one's smartphone" (p.9) seems to have negative consequences of communication between people, to the detriment of the satisfaction of relationships and feelings of personal well-being (Roberts & David, 2016). However, little is known about what causes phubbing behavior and how it has become a cultural norm of modern communication. 

In the current study, the first phase of the creation of an instrument to evaluate phubbing behaviors is presented. Specifically, the advantages of the process of the natural semantic network technique are explored, on the meaning of the phubbing concept, by a sample of scholars related to the educational and psychological field. In this way, the research provides knowledge about the way in which people organize, evaluate and share their representations and meanings, which constitutes a potential tool for the analysis of social representations.

So, the objectives of this work are:

1. Develop the technique of natural semantic networks for the creation of an evaluation instrument.

2. Identify the meanings of the phubbing concept through a sample of scholars.

3. Establish the dimensions that allow defining the items of the questionnaire.

The development of this research comprises a first stage, for the design of an instrument by using the natural semantic networks procedure (NSN). For doing that, information is gathered about the meaning of a specific term attributed by scholars. In this case, the procedure NSN allows to inquire about the main meanings of the concept and generate the cognitive representation that the subjects of the sample have about their own preconceptions. The precursors Reyes (1993) and Valdez (1998) explain that this technique offers the possibility of constructing measurement instruments that demonstrate the specific context in which people develop. According to the procedure of these authors, it is based on the presentation of a stimulus word, in this case, phubbing, which allows each participant in the sample to associate a minimum of five defining words with the word stimulus. Then, these defining words are ranked from 1 to 10, considering the value 1 for the word most related to the concept and the value 10 for the least related. These authors propose a series of values to find the results: - Value J or size of the network, which represents the richness of the network - Value M or semantic weight, which results from the sum of the values of each of the repeated concepts, reflecting a list of defining words ordered from most to least important. - Set SAM, which corresponds to the first twenty-five words with the highest value M or semantic weight. This process forms the sum of all the values in a repeated concept. This value is very important because it allows establishment of the dimensions, grouping the concepts to each dimension in line with the theoretical contributions. - Value G, represents the density of the network that, from the value M, provides the difference of the values between a concept and its successive one. - Value FMG or quantitative semantic distance, whose first value with more semantic weight constitutes 100% and facilitates the semantic distance of each concept, with respect to the central concept of the network.

Natural semantic networks procedure turned out to be a useful technique to explore the meanings that expert people participating in this study. These meanings are related to what they interpret about this term together with their expectations. Thus, the possibilities provided by NSN procedure in exploratory research in social sciences are evident, since it requires capturing the opinion of the participants, eliminating previous explanations and allowing to systematize, in a simple way, how people construct their cognitive representations about ideas, behaviors and products. Regarding the phubbing meanings pointed by the scholars from different fields of study, and the values found through the process explained above about the NSN procedure, the following dimensions that emerge are the following: cultural (CUL), technological (TEC), social (SOC), psychological (PSI) and communicational (COM). Thus, the weight of each dimension will have in the questionnaire is given by associating each concept within the network with a particular dimension. However, one of the limitations detected is the sample chosen. It would have been convenient to carry out this with a sample composed by young people and adults which have any trend to develop phubbing behaviors, because of the consideration concede to the function of the word “stimulus”. This is due that each person has its own logic according to the group of people with whom it is worked. In addition, it would have been interesting to select two or more groups to compare the meanings they grant, instead of just using a single group. Finally, it is necessary to highlight that NSN procedure is a novel methodological option for the approach of the collective meaning about a concept. It could be a potential tool for working in social fields, with the purpose of study the representations that a community acknowledge to have regarding in educational processes.

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