WebLECa test to assess adolescents’ Internet reading literacy skills

  1. Ladislao Salmerón 1
  2. Arantxa García 1
  3. Eduardo Vidal-Abarca 1
  1. 1 Universitat de València
    info

    Universitat de València

    Valencia, España

    ROR https://ror.org/043nxc105

Journal:
Psicothema

ISSN: 0214-9915

Year of publication: 2018

Volume: 30

Issue: 4

Pages: 388-394

Type: Article

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Abstract

Background: Reading on the Internet requires specific skills (e.g., navigation), apart from comprehension abilities, but there is no test in Spanish to assess these skills in adolescents. The goal of this study is to fill this gap with a test called WebLEC, inspired by the PISA framework. Method: WebLEC was validated with secondary education students (n = 941). It includes 28 items of three types (access & retrieve, integrate & interpret, and reflect & evaluate) applied to four reading scenarios (e.g., web portal, search engines, Internet forums, and Wikipedia). WebLEC provides a general reading literacy index, plus two navigation indices. Results: The validity and reliability of WebLEC was confirmed, and a scale to diagnose reading literacy skills is provided. Conclusions: WebLEC assesses adolescents’ Internet reading literacy skills. Given the growing importance of the Internet in daily life and learning situations, assessing these skills is the first step in implementing instructional interventions to foster Internet reading.

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Funding information

This work was carried out with the support of the PROMETEO/2013/011 project, financed by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports of the Generalitat Valenciana and with the support of Project: EDU2014-55662-R; Ref: BES-2015-075529, financed by the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness of the Spanish Government. We thank the students and the rest of the educational community for their participation in the study. Special thanks to those who collaborated in the process of preparing the test and in the data collection: Victoria García, Inmaculada Fajardo, Ignacio Máñez, Alba Rubio, María Ángeles Serrano, and Ester Villalta. The WebLEC test is available for use for educational and research purposes, upon request to the authors.

Funders

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