Researchers at the Centre for Social Informatics have published an article in Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking
Dr. Katja Prevodnik, Dr. Marina Trkman, Jošt Bartol, and Dr. Andraž Petrovčič, researchers at the Centre for Social Informatics, have published an original research article titled “An Assessment of the Structural Validity and Measurement Invariance of the Web-Use Skills Scale for Aging Internet Users” in Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, a top-tier journal in the field of psychology and Internet studies.
Research on digital inequality has found that aging adults are often at risk of digital exclusion. To develop appropriate initiatives to facilitate digital engagement, it is important to obtain high-quality data on their Internet skills. A commonly used proxy measure of Internet skills is the Web-Use Skills scale (WUS), which has, however, not yet been sufficiently validated among older Internet users.
In this article, the authors investigated the structural validity and measurement invariance of a 14-item WUS scale. The scale was translated into Slovenian and pretested with cognitive interviews among older Internet users. Data were collected from two independent samples of Internet users aged 50+ years (N1 = 259 and N2 = 256).
Examination of structural validity confirmed the unidimensionality of WUS, but only in case of the reduced 6-item version of the WUS scale. Further analysis confirmed measurement invariance of this short version between the two samples and demographic groups based on age, gender, and education. The results support the applicability of the WUS scale in cross-group comparisons of Internet skills in the population of aging Internet users and point to several opportunities for future work.
The study was funded by research project J5-2558 (The Implications of Proxy Internet Use for the Internet Skills of Older Adults), research programme P5-0399 (Internet research), and Jošt Bartol's Young Researcher fellowship, funded by the Slovenian Research Agency of the Republic of Slovenia.