Succinct Survey Measures of Web-Use Skills

There is a dearth of survey instruments for measuring Internet skills. This article presents results from additional implementations of a previously-developed index measure. It considers the performance of the original instrument over time as well as shortened versions of it on two surveys of different populations. Drawing on analyses of five different data sets, the article makes recommendations for various length survey items for measuring people’s web-use skills.

[1]  Eszter Hargittai,et al.  Survey Measures of Web-Oriented Digital Literacy , 2005 .

[2]  E. Hargittai.  Digital Na(t)ives? Variation in Internet Skills and Uses among Members of the “Net Generation”* , 2010 .

[3]  Eszter Hargittai,et al.  Second-level digital divide , 2002 .

[4]  Eszter Hargittai,et al.  An Update on Survey Measures of Web-Oriented Digital Literacy , 2009 .

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

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

[7]  Michael J. Stern,et al.  Digital Inequality and Place: The Effects of Technological Diffusion on Internet Proficiency and Usage across Rural, Suburban, and Urban Counties , 2009 .

[8]  Wallace Koehler,et al.  Virtual inequality: Beyond the digital divide , 2004, J. Assoc. Inf. Sci. Technol..

[9]  Sonia Livingstone,et al.  Balancing opportunities and risks in teenagers’ use of the internet: the role of online skills and internet self-efficacy , 2010, New Media Soc..

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

[11]  E. Hargittai.  The Digital Reproduction of Inequality , 2008 .

[12]  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..

[13]  Paul DiMaggio,et al.  Digital Inequality: From Unequal Access to Differentiated Use , 2004 .