Development of the 21st century digital literacy skills scale, validity and reliability study

In this study, it was aimed to develop a valid and reliable scale to determine the opinions of secondary school students and teachers about 21st century digital literacy skills. In the scale development phase, firstly, content validity was ensured and an item pool of 102 items was created, consisting of 3 sub-components (information literacy, media literacy, technology literacy). After the expert opinion, 102 items were reduced to 94 items in total and a total of 794 people were administered the scale for the first application of the scale development phase. The data obtained as a result of the first application were subjected to exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and reliability studies for each component separately. As a result of the analysis, a total of 48 items (information literacy subcomponent with 2 factors, media literacy with 3 factors, and technology literacy subcomponent with 3 factors) was obtained. In order to test the suitability of the factor structure of the scale, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was performed by applying the scale to a total of 418 people. As a result of the analysis, the factor structure (fit index values) of the scale were found within the desired reference ranges. In accordance with the sub-objectives of the study, there was no significant difference according to the variables of the gender of the students and the seniority of the teachers. According to the gender variable of the teachers, a significant difference was observed in favor of male teachers only in terms of technology literacy. It was observed that there was a significant difference between students and teachers in favor of teachers among all dimensions. As a result of all the analysis studies of the scale, a scale consisting of 42 items, which can be applied to secondary school students with proven validity and reliability, was developed.