The Junior Students’ Internet Literacy Scale: Measure Development and Validation

Abstract

Despite the great attention paid to Internet literacy research, little has been done to overcome the problems stemming from the heterogeneity of Internet literacy nomenclature and the use of non-standardized measurement tools, especially for adolescents in developing countries. Considering junior students are the high-risk groups of Internet addiction and have wide access to the Internet, the aim of this study is to develop a new scale to assess Chinese junior students’ Internet literacy (JIL). In the psychometric study (n = 1099 junior students), an 18-item scale was developed using the exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, which includes five subscales: knowledge and skills for the Internet (KSI), Internet self-management (ISM), awareness and cognition of Internet (ACI), Internet interactions (II), and autonomous learning on the Internet (ALI). Evidence of internal reliability, test-retest reliability, and construct validity provided good psychometric support for the measure. Criterion-related validity of the measures was demonstrated by examining its anticipated theoretical relations to two hypotheses: (1) High JIL level alleviates the adverse effects of an individual’s Internet addiction degree, while pathological use for interacting with others on the Internet exacerbates the adverse effects; (2) an individual’s degree of Internet use self-efficacy is positively associated with JIL level. It is envisaged that the JIL Scale will help facilitate unified research in the field.