Adolescents educational level and computer use: An exploratory study of the relationship between adolescents current educational level and the use of computer applications and computer attitudes

Abstract

This study focuses on two research questions. First, I will investigate whether or not the current educational level of adolescents is a meaningful concept in multimedia research. Second, the relevance of current educational level is compared to the concept of parental education that has been used in (multi)media research so far. The research questions were addressed by means of a quantitative study of 232 secondary school students in Flanders about their multimedia use and attitudes towards multimedia. The results suggest that when the relationship between parental education and multimedia uselattitudes is controlled for adolescents' current educational level, it becomes insignificant. Adolescents' current educational level, on the other hand, remained significant throughout the whole of the analysis, even when controlled for parental education. Based on these results I conclude that there is considerable evidence indicating that, first of all, current educational level is indeed a meaningful concept in multimedia research and, secondly, that when multimedia research is focused on adolescent behavior it is advisable to include current educational level as a measure of social class in the analysis