Internet Self-Efficacy and the Psychology of the Digital Divide

Internet self-efficacy, or the belief in one's capabilities to organize and execute courses of Internet actions required to produce given attainments, is a potentially important factor in efforts to close the digital divide that separates experienced Internet users from novices. Prior research on Internet self-efficacy has been limited to examining specific task performance and narrow behavioral domains rather than overall attainments in relation to general Internet use, and has not yielded evidence of reliability and construct validity. Survey data were collected to develop a reliable operational measure of Internet self-efficacy and to examine its construct validity. An eight-item Internet self-efficacy…