Questionnaire validation to establish the relationship between ICT skills and school performance

Abstract

The study purpose was to validate from a homologation and adaptation process, the questionnaire "Staff Information, Communication and Technology Skills Audit Questionnaire - Scott Lower School Bedford". The objective of this questionnaire is to discover who is sufficient and in what kind of aspect needs additional support/training for an adequate ICT use, through the application of the Item Response Theory (IRT) model for polytomical items of graduated response. The original questionnaire consists on nine factors, for this study, three have been considered and a fourth has been added related to the use of Interactive Whiteboards (PDI) and was evaluated by the judges. The proposed version consists of 36 items and was applied to 30 students from the fourth grade of secondary school of the Regular Basic Education (EBR), in Moquegua, where the ICT project was carried out, between 2014 - 2019. The latent structure of the items was analyzed, firstly, applying the exploratory factorial analysis through SPSS, secondly, for the confirmatory analysis the PLS-SEM methodology was used, which is a second generation multivariate method called Structural Equation Modeling with Partial Least Squares. Regarding the matrix of poly-correlationships between items, it is indicated that the 4 factors correlate adequately with the dependent variable - School Performance, thus the estimation of the parameters was carried out with the maximum marginal plausibility. Based on the results of the factor analysis, 4 items were excluded from the scale, this due to the distortion and inadequate behavior in the model, resulting in a questionnaire of 28 items. The results revealed in the analyses that the scale and its components presented adequate properties of validity and reliability and the feasibility of establishing a correlation with School Performance.