Abstract

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 of the 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.

摘要

这项研究评估了短版互联网技能量表的结构和标准有效性，并检查了它的四个维度（运营，信息导航，社交和创造力）是否受到一般互联网技能的较高维度的影响（一秒）。阶因子。2018年，在斯洛文尼亚的814名互联网用户样本中进行了包括20个项目的互联网技能量表和22个其他与数字包容性相关的项目的面对面调查。探索性和确认性因素分析的结果以及其他多元方法的结果表明，互联网技能量表的特征是从高到足够的收敛性和发散性有效性。观察到操作和信息导航技能的可接受标准有效性。在测量不变性方面，数据支持结构和度量不变性，而标量不变性并未得到充分证实，这表明老年人在创造力技能项目上的较低得分与互联网技能水平较低并没有相关性，这与年轻人中的情况相同。最后，结果提供了互联网技能量表作为二阶结构的原始证据，这意味着可以创建一个单独的互联网技能量表总评分作为衡量个人互联网技能的适当标准。