Digital divide: Addressing internet skills. Educational implications in the validation of a scale

Recent studies indicate that Internet skills have a positive impact on academic achievement. This article presents a national study that seeks to validate an Inter-net skills scale that was already tested in other EU countries (the Netherlands and the United Kingdom) to understand the competence level of the population as a whole as well as across population sectors. The scale questionnaire was completed by a sample of the Italian population stratified by gender, age and geo-graphical area. The result is globally consistent at the empirical level as well as at the cross-national level. All the five scales showed excellent internal consistency