Development and Validation of a Digital Literacy Scale in the Artificial Intelligence Era for College Students

Abstract

This study developed digital literacy instruments and tested their effectiveness on college students’ perceptions of AI technologies. In creating a new digital literacy test tool, we reviewed the concept and scale of digital literacy based on previous studies that identified the characteristics and measurement of AI literacy. We developed 23 preliminary questions for our research instrument and used a quantitative approach to survey 318 undergraduates. After conducting exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, we found that digital literacy in the age of AI had four ability sub-factors: critical understanding, artificial intelligence social impact recognition, artificial intelligence technology utilization, and ethical behavior. Then we tested the sub-factors’ predictive powers on the perception of AI’s usefulness and ease of use. The regression result shows that the most common powerful predictor of the usefulness and ease of use of AI technology was the ability to use AI technology. This finding implies that for college students, the ability to use various tools based on AI technology is an essential competency in the AI era.