Measuring Internet Skills

• In Event: Focus on Methods for Addressing Theoretical Questions in Communication and Technology

Abstract

Although a number of instruments have been used to measure Internet skills in nationally representative surveys, there are several challenges with the measures available: incompleteness and over-simplification, conceptual blurriness, and the use of self-reports. We aimed to overcome these challenges by proposing an elaborate conceptualization and developing a set of reliable measures for use in research, practice, and policy evaluations. For realization, we adopted a hierarchical process: a literature review of skills related studies that can be used to develop an Internet skills framework and associated instrument, cognitive interviews held in the UK and the Netherlands to refine the proposed instrument, an online survey pilot tests of the proposed instrument both in the UK and in the Netherlands, and a full survey in the Netherlands to test for internal and external validity. The result is a theoretical, empirically and cross nationally consistent instrument consisting of five types of Internet skills.

Authors

• Alexander van Deursen, U of Twente / GW / CW

• Ellen Johanna Helsper, London School of Economics and Political Science

• Rebecca Eynon, U of Oxford