Exploring the Usefulness of Social Networking Websites: a Multidimensional Model

The rapid expansion of social networking websites is raising several issues concerning the influence on the individual and social behavior of users. Using SNW is growing rapidly among various groups of people. From an educational point of view it is important to know how to effectively use the opportunities offered/created by SNW. Unfortunately, the amount of empirical research to support SNW educational usefulness is limited. On the other hand, there is a need to have some reliable instruments to measure the various facets of SNW’ usefulness. In this paper we present a hierarchical and multidimensional measurement model to explore the usefulness of these websites. The model was tested on one sample and cross validated on another sample. Both samples were collected from Lithuanian universities students, the former from Humanities faculties and the latter from Social sciences faculties. The results revealed four dimensions with a different weight in each sample. This suggests a relationship between the educational background of the users and how they perceive the relative importance of each facet.

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