As part of the ICILS 2013 survey, Grade 8 students in the 21 participating ICILS countries completed a questionnaire concerning their use of information and communication technology (ICT) at home and at school, their experience of using ICT, and their access to ICT resources. Students answered this computer-based questionnaire after completing the ICILS assessment of computer and information literacy (CIL).
More specifically, the ICILS student questionnaire included questions relating to students’ background characteristics, their experience and use of computers and ICT to complete a range of different tasks in school and out of school, and their attitudes toward the use of computers and ICT. The introduction to the questionnaire advised students that a computer could refer to a desktop computer, a notebook or laptop computer, a netbook computer, or a tablet device such as an iPad. The responses from this questionnaire thus provided information about aspects of Grade 8 students’ familiarity with ICT1 and their perceptions of using ICT at school and at home.
Our focus in this chapter is mainly on Research Question 3: What characteristics of students’ levels of access to, familiarity with, and self-reported proficiency in using computers are related to student achievement in computer and information literacy? When reporting the information presented in this chapter, we provide detailed results for each country (typically percentages) pertaining to particular questionnaire items. We use scale scores based on sets of items to provide a more parsimonious picture of differences across countries as well as differences between subgroups such as females and males.