Tangible outcomes of internet use: from digital skills to tangible outcomes project report

In the past decade, digital divide discussions have moved from discussions of use or non-use, to a more nuanced recognition of different types and levels of access, motivation, skills and Internet use in a discourse that centres around digital inclusion and inequality. However, there remain challenges in measurement and conceptualisation. In 2014, the authors of this report started a project with the main objective to develop theoretically informed measures that can be used to explain how people use the Internet and what the benefits might be. A first report (van Deursen, Helsper & Eynon, 2014) looked at how to measure digital skills, an area in which a good amount of research has been done, although good measures with a solid theoretical grounding are scarce. In the current report, the authors move towards a research area that is very underdeveloped: the tangible outcomes that Internet use might result in. Most research in this area focuses on measuring engagement or different uses of the Internet and then assumes that activities performed online result in the corresponding outcomes. An unequal distribution of these types of engagement in turn is assumed to reinforce existing levels of social inequality. In this report, the framework used to design measures of engagement and related outcomes starts from the premise that outcomes of Internet use can be mapped onto different types of offline resources. It argues that a clear separation needs to be made between undertaking different kinds of activities in the digital sphere (i.e. digital resource fields) and the tangible outcomes in different spheres of everyday life (i.e. offline resource fields) that result from this engagement.

[1]  Antonio Fini,et al.  Are young generations in secondary school digitally competent? A study on Italian teenagers , 2012, Comput. Educ..

[2]  R. Eynon,et al.  Pathways to digital literacy and engagement , 2013 .

[3]  Jr. Leon Nolan,et al.  The Internet and Social Inequalities , 2010 .

[4]  Kjartan Ólafsson,et al.  Net Children Go Mobile: risks and opportunities , 2014 .

[5]  Pantelis Koutroumpis,et al.  Technological affluence and subjective well-being , 2011 .

[6]  Alexander Johannes Aloysius Maria van Deursen,et al.  A nuanced understanding of Internet use and non-use amongst older adults , 2015 .

[7]  Sonia Livingstone,et al.  Digital literacy and safety skills , 2011 .

[8]  Henry Jenkins.  Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century , 2006 .

[9]  Marco Gui,et al.  Digital skills of internet natives: Different forms of digital literacy in a random sample of northern Italian high school students , 2011, New Media Soc..

[10]  Yair Amichai-Hamburger,et al.  Experiments in Digital Literacy , 2004, Cyberpsychology Behav. Soc. Netw..

[11]  Alexander van Deursen,et al.  Proposing a Survey Instrument for Measuring Operational, Formal, Information, and Strategic Internet Skills , 2012, Int. J. Hum. Comput. Interact..

[12]  Alexander van Deursen,et al.  Internet skill-related problems in accessing online health information , 2012, Int. J. Medical Informatics.

[13]  James C. Anderson,et al.  STRUCTURAL EQUATION MODELING IN PRACTICE: A REVIEW AND RECOMMENDED TWO-STEP APPROACH , 1988 .

[14]  D. Bawden.  Origins and Concepts of Digital Literacy , 2008 .

[15]  A. Ferrari.  Digital Competence in practice: An analysis of frameworks , 2012 .

[16]  Yoram Eshet-Alkalai,et al.  Digital Literacy: A Conceptual Framework for Survival Skills in the Digital era , 2004 .

[17]  Frank Parry,et al.  Social Consequences of Internet Use: Access, Involvement, and Interaction , 2003 .

[18]  R. Eynon,et al.  Distinct skill pathways to digital engagement , 2013 .

[19]  C. Haythornthwaite.  Social networks and online community , 2009 .

[20]  Eszter Hargittai,et al.  Succinct Survey Measures of Web-Use Skills , 2012 .

[21]  A. Bandura.  Social Foundations of Thought and Action: A Social Cognitive Theory , 1985 .

[22]  J. Stevens.  Applied Multivariate Statistics for the Social Sciences , 1986 .

[23]  Alexander van Deursen,et al.  The digital divide shifts to differences in usage , 2014, New Media Soc..

[24]  Eszter Hargittai,et al.  Second-Level Digital Divide: Differences in People's Online Skills , 2002, First Monday.

[25]  Alexander Johannes Aloysius Maria van Deursen,et al.  Digital Skills: Unlocking the Information Society , 2014 .

[26]  R. Bagozzi.  Evaluating Structural Equation Models with Unobservable Variables and Measurement Error: A Comment , 1981 .

[27]  Brian H. Spitzberg.  Preliminary Development of a Model and Measure of Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) Competence , 2006, J. Comput. Mediat. Commun..

[28]  Alexander Johannes Aloysius Maria van Deursen,et al.  Internet skills performance tests: are people ready for eHealth? , 2011 .

[29]  Mark Warschauer,et al.  Demystifying the digital divide. , 2003, Scientific American.

[30]  E. Hargittai,et al.  Digital Distinction: Status-Specific Types of Internet Usage , 2009 .

[31]  A social revolution online? The digital divide shifts to gaps of usage , 2012 .

[32]  A. V. Deursen.  Internet Skills: Vital assets in an information society , 2010 .

[33]  Rex B. Kline,et al.  Principles and Practice of Structural Equation Modeling , 1998 .

[34]  Katelyn Y. A. McKenna,et al.  Oxford Handbook of Internet Psychology , 2007 .

[35]  Denise Potosky,et al.  The Internet knowledge (iKnow) measure , 2007, Comput. Hum. Behav..

[36]  Eden Litt,et al.  Measuring users’ internet skills: A review of past assessments and a look toward the future , 2013, New Media Soc..

[37]  Caroline J. Tolbert,et al.  Virtual Inequality: Beyond the Digital Divide , 2004, Perspectives on Politics.

[38]  J. Dijk,et al.  Investigating outcomes of online engagement , 2014 .

[39]  J. V. Dijk.  The Evolution of the Digital Divide - The Digital Divide Turns to Inequality of Skills and Usage , 2012 .

[40]  N. Selwyn.  Digital division or digital decision? A study of non-users and low-users of computers , 2006 .

[41]  Alexander van Deursen,et al.  Internet skills and the digital divide , 2011, New Media Soc..

[42]  R. Stine,et al.  Bootstrapping Goodness-of-Fit Measures in Structural Equation Models , 1992 .

[43]  A. Rubin,et al.  Predictors of Internet Use , 2000 .

[44]  Ellen Helsper,et al.  Family dynamics and Internet use in Britain: What role do children play in adults' engagement with the Internet? , 2015 .

[45]  P. Bourdieu.  Forms of Capital , 2002 .

[46]  Hans Kuhlemeier,et al.  The impact of computer use at home on students' Internet skills , 2007, Comput. Educ..

[47]  Scott E. Caplan.  A Theory of Problematic Internet Use and Psychosocial Well-Being , 2003 .

[48]  Kimberly Merritt,et al.  AN INVESTIGATION OF SELF-REPORTED COMPUTER LITERACY: IS IT RELIABLE? , 2005 .

[49]  Sanna Talja,et al.  The social and discursive construction of computing skills , 2005, J. Assoc. Inf. Sci. Technol..

[50]  Ellen J. Helsper,et al.  Gendered Internet Use Across Generations and Life Stages , 2010, Commun. Res..

[51]  Alexander Johannes Aloysius Maria van Deursen,et al.  Measuring digital skills: from digital skills to tangible outcomes , 2014 .

[52]  Alexander van Deursen,et al.  Using the Internet: Skill related problems in users' online behavior , 2009, Interact. Comput..

[53]  Alexander van Deursen,et al.  Internet Skills, Sources of Support, and Benefiting From Internet Use , 2014, Int. J. Hum. Comput. Interact..

[54]  William Voon,et al.  Perceived versus actual computer-email-web fluency , 2007, Comput. Hum. Behav..

[55]  Fred D. Davis,et al.  User Acceptance of Computer Technology: A Comparison of Two Theoretical Models , 1989 .

[56]  J. V. Dijk,et al.  The Deepening Divide: Inequality in the Information Society , 2005 .

[57]  S. Brooks,et al.  Applied Multivariate Statistics for the Social Sciences , 1993 .

[58]  Rebecca Eynon,et al.  Adults learning online: Digital choice and/or digital exclusion? , 2011, New Media Soc..

[59]  Brian S. Krueger.  A Comparison of Conventional and Internet Political Mobilization , 2006 .

[60]  S. Hick,et al.  Inequality and the digital divide : myths and realities , 2002 .

[61]  J. Hair.  Multivariate data analysis : a global perspective , 2010 .

[62]  KuhlemeierHans,et al.  The impact of computer use at home on students' Internet skills , 2007 .

[63]  Alexander van Deursen,et al.  Improving digital skills for the use of online public information and services , 2009, Gov. Inf. Q..

[64]  Paul Shafer,et al.  From Unequal Access to Differentiated Use: A Literature Review and Agenda for Research on Digital Inequality , 2004 .

[65]  Roman Brandtweiner,et al.  How to become a sophisticated user: a two-dimensional approach to e-literacy , 2010, New Media Soc..

[66]  Alexander van Deursen,et al.  Measuring Internet Skills , 2010, Int. J. Hum. Comput. Interact..

[67]  Alexander Johannes Aloysius Maria van Deursen,et al.  Rethinking Internet skills: The contribution of gender, age, education, Internet experience, and hours online to medium- and content-related Internet skills , 2011 .