Cognitive styles: Web portal acceptance items measurement

Abstract

The central intention of the paper was to establish a conceptual valid assessment framework and sound instruments for the measurement of cognitive styles in predicting academician and non-academician staff use and acceptance of technology. The latest technology acceptance model, unified theory of acceptance and use of technology, along with psychology—cognitive styles was tested to examine the role of cognitive styles in influencing the usage of I-Staff portal. A stratified random sampling method was used in this paper and 72 respondents participated. The instrument development and validation were adopted using the Rasch measurement paradigm, framework and model. Rasch analysis confirmed the cognitive styles among academician and non-academician staff. Instruments were developed: a 15-item to measure system acceptance including performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence and facilitating conditions and items measuring the experienced using the portal and cognitive styles respectively. The findings were discussed in relation to the theoretical perspective underpinning this paper. Besides, findings from this paper helped to identify several salient categories that affect the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology variables. Results of this paper also confirm the robustness of the Venkatesh's model on unified theory of acceptance and use of technology.