Past research suggests the ability to adapt to technological change by learning new technologies is a core feature of technological competence and consequential for inequality. Yet there exists no definition or measure of what people do to learn technologies that are new to them and empirically link this to inequality. To address this gap, I conducted studies involving over 2,000 adolescents to develop and validate a measure of what I call “digital adaptability,” the use of five habits that help individuals learn technologies that are new to them. The studies included observation and cognitive interviews to describe adaptability and develop an initial item pool, a pilot to narrow items using structural equation modeling, a full test with 897 eighth-grade students in Chicago with analysis of convergent and discriminant validity, and a replication study with 1,285 high school students near Boston. Finally, using Chicago and Boston area data, I find adaptability correlates with students’ educational plans and career aspirations in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics —linking digital adaptability to students’ futures. Overall, the digital adaptability measure provides a critical theoretical and empirical tool for digital inequality research, practice, and policy.

过去的研究表明，通过学习新技术来适应技术变化的能力是技术能力的核心特征，也是不平等的必然结果。但是，对于人们为学习新技术而将其与不平等经验联系起来的定义或衡量标准尚无定论或衡量。为了弥补这一差距，我进行了涉及2,000多名青少年的研究，以开发和验证一种称为“数字适应性”的方法，该方法使用了五种习惯来帮助个人学习对他们来说是新技术。这些研究包括观察和认知访谈，以描述适应性并开发初始项目库，使用结构方程模型缩小项目范围的飞行员，对897名芝加哥八年级学生进行的全面测试，并分析了收敛性和判别性有效性，以及对波士顿附近1,285名高中生的复制研究。最后，利用芝加哥和波士顿地区的数据，我发现适应性与学生的教育计划以及科学，技术，工程和数学领域的职业抱负相关联-将数字适应性与学生的未来联系起来。总体而言，数字适应性测度为数字不平等研究，实践和政策提供了至关重要的理论和经验工具。