New scientific article published in The Information Society

The SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus epidemic (Covid-19) has strongly highlighted the importance of digital technologies for the functioning not only of individuals, but also of entire societies and institutions that ensure their smooth functioning. In the field of education in particular, the digital divide and the associated lack of internet skills has been shown to be a major barrier to engaging a wider group of people in various forms of remote learning.

We need valid survey scales to reliably measure different types of internet skills among internet users. The article "Measuring internet skills in a general population: A large-scale validation of the short Internet Skills Scale in Slovenia" presents the validation of the survey scale "Internet Skills Scale" using data from Slovenia. The researchers from the Center for Social Informatics confirmed that the scale has adequate internal, discriminant and criterion validity. They also confirmed empirically for the first time that the scale reflects an understanding of internet skills as a single multidimensional theoretical construct that can be validly used to compare the level of internet skills between younger and older internet users.

The article is the outcome of research activities and projects funded by the Slovenian Research Agency (ARRS). It is co-authored by Professor Alexander J. A. M. van Deursen (University of Twente), one of the leading researchers in the field of digital inequalities and one of the co-authors of the tested scale.