Development of a Scale to Measure Attitudes toward Information Technology

Abstract

Educators, and business, and political leaders are increasingly recognizing that computing is a new basic skill necessary for economic opportunity and social mobility U.S. President Obama has announced a new initiative, “Computer Science For All” to empower a generation of American students with the computer science skills they need to thrive in a digital economy (2016). Employers seek technical computer specialists who can write software and invent new applications, but American universities are only training enough students to fill about 40% of the projected 1.1 million technology and computing jobs expected by 2024 (National Center for Women and Information Technology, 2016). Moreover, a lack of gender parity within the U.S. technology industry has long been viewed as a critical problem, detracting from innovation and prosperity. Pursuit of information technology (IT) majors depends, to a great extent, on students' attitudes toward IT. This study developed an Attitude toward IT Scale with a gender subtext to measure certain attitudes toward IT, held by college students. The norm group consisted of mostly freshmen enrolled in 2011 (N = 373), at a large four-year public university in Illinois. Reliability and validity of the 30-item Scale were examined by using Cronbach's alpha and a principal components factor analysis with orthogonal rotation using varimax with Kaiser normalization; the rotation converged in seven iterations. Results of data analyses showed that overall reliability is high (0.85), and factor analyses revealed five orthogonal factors with high coefficient alphas—factors that represented relevant attitude constructs. This Scale may be used by educators at the senior high school and college levels to evaluate the effectiveness of different teaching/learning strategies in promoting positive student attitudes toward IT, and in improving learning among students. The Scale is unique in that it includes attitudes toward gender equality of opportunity in IT.