Examining the relationship between students' digital literacy and attitudes towards digital technologies

The main purpose of this study is to determine the relationship between students' digital literacy and their attitudes towards digital technologies. The sample of the study consists of 931 volunteer students studying in the seventh grade in Balıkesir central districts. Analyzes were carried out with 620 data as a result of removing extreme values. Within the scope of the research, the Personal Information Form was used to obtain the demographic information of the participants, the Digital Literacy Scale developed by Başıbüyük (2020) to measure their digital literacy levels, and the Digital Technology Attitude Scale developed by Cabı (2016) to determine their attitudes towards digital technologies. Descriptive analyzes were conducted to determine the distribution of the participants' demographic characteristics within the data set. The necessary reliability and validity studies were carried out by determining the level of relationship between the sub-dimensions of the scales. Analysis of demographic factors in the study was conducted with independent samples t-Test and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) for unrelated samples. Pearson Correlation Analysis was conducted to determine the relationship between digital literacy and attitude variables towards digital technologies. Predictive Regression Analysis was performed to determine the predictive power. According to the results; There was no significant difference between the variables of digital literacy and attitude towards technology according to gender, frequency of internet use, computer-tablet ownership, participation in eTwinning-Erasmus projects. A moderately positive, statistically significant relationship was found between the scales (r= .436, p<0.01). Students' digital literacy explains 19% of the total variance in their attitudes towards digital technologies (R = .436, R2 = .190). As a result of the analysis, it was concluded that digital literacy significantly predicted the variable of attitudes towards digital technology.