Development of a Survey Based Tool to Measure Digital Literacy for Arabic Internet Users: A New Model of Assessment

Project: Research project

Project Details

Description

The Emirate of Qatar has embarked on an ambitious program to make the resources of modern information technology available to citizens and residents of the country. ictQATAR, the governmental entity charged with developing ICT in the country, includes among its goals to “universalize access to social services and to create a knowledge-based online society.”i The desire to use ICT to make information easily available to the entire society is a noble one. However, for this strategy to succeed, it is not sufficient simply to put information on the World Wide Web and make Internet connectivity available to all. Research carried out in the US demonstrates that access by itself does not necessarily eliminate the digital divide; rather, users must have a reasonably high level of digital literacy to find and make good use of the resources potentially available. To understand what kinds of deficits Internet users may have and to design programs to eliminate them, it is necessary to develop a tool to measure digital literacy. Such tools exist for English-language Web users, and have allowed for the creation of interventions designed to overcome digital divides. For Arabic Web users, however, no such tool is available. Accordingly the main goal of this study is to create a tool that will allow for an assessment of Internet digital literacy among Arabic-language Web users in Qatar. This in turn will allow policy makers to design whatever interventions might be necessary to ensure that Qatari citizens and residents can take full advantage of the resources that they are offered. We plan to sample Arabic speaking users of the Internet who regularly conduct searches in Arabic. We will observe their Web searching strategies on assigned tasks and ask them to complete a survey that measures their knowledge of the Internet. We will correlate their responses to the knowledge-based items with their ability to successfully complete the Web searching tasks and their efficiency in doing so. This will result in what to our knowledge will be the first, reliable tool for measuring the digital literacy levels of Arabic speaking Web users.
StatusFinished
Effective start/end date9/4/139/3/14

Funding

  • Qatar National Research Fund (UREP 14-126-5-031)

Fingerprint

Explore the research topics touched on by this project. These labels are generated based on the underlying awards/grants. Together they form a unique fingerprint.