Measuring internet skills in a general population : a large-scale validation of the short Internet Skills Scale in Slovenia

Grošelj, Darja (author), Deursen, Alexander J. A. M. van (author), Dolničar, Vesna (author), Burnik, Tomaž (author), Petrovčič, Andraž (author)

This study assessed the construct and criterion validity of the short version of the Internet Skills Scale and examined whether its four dimensions – Operational, Information Navigation, Social, and Creative skills – are influenced by a higher-order dimension of general internet skills as one second-order factor. In 2018, a face-to-face survey comprising ofthe 20-item Internet Skills Scale and 22 other items related to digital inclusion was conducted in a sample of 814 internet users in Slovenia. The results of exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, as well as other multivariate methods, showed that the Internet Skills Scale is characterized by high to adequate convergent and divergent validity.Acceptable criterion validity was observed for Operational and Information Navigation skills. In terms of measurement invariance, the data supported configural and metric invariance, whereas the scalar invariance was not fully confirmed, suggesting that older adults' lower scores on the Creative skills items were not related to lower levels of internet skills in the same way as they were among younger individuals. Last, the results provided original evidence of the Internet Skills Scale as a second-order construct, meaning that a single summative Internet Skills Scale score could be created as an adequate measure of an individual's internet skills.

• Language: English
• Keywords: digital inclusion, factor analysis, internet skills, Internet Skills Scale, scale validation, survey research, internet, internet users, Slovenia
• Work type: Article
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Organization: FDV - Faculty of Social Sciences
• Publication status: Published
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Year: 2021
• Number of pages: Str. 63-81
• Numbering: Vol. 37, no. 2
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-136387
• UDC: 077:316(497.4)
• ISSN on article: 0197-2243
• DOI: 10.1080/01972243.2020.1862377
• COBISS.SI-ID: 46679043
• Publication date in RUL: 28.04.2022

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: The information society : an international journal
• Shortened title: Inf. soc.
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• ISSN: 0197-2243
• COBISS.SI-ID: 25613568

Licences

• License: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
• Description: The most restrictive Creative Commons license. This only allows people to download and share the work for no commercial gain and for no other purposes.

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian
• Keywords: veščine, merjenje, internet, uporabniki interneta, Slovenija