Exploring the role of high school students’ internet use on their internet self-efficacy: a structural equation model

Abstract

ABSTRACT During the normalization of COVID-19 control measures, more and more high school students are learning through the Internet. With the widespread use of online teaching, students’ internet self-efficacy has become an important factor in measuring students’ online learning ability. Although researchers have been paying greater attention to the relationship between duration of internet use, internet use experience, attitudes towards the internet and internet self-efficacy, the existing literature lacks in-depth analysis of the structural relationships of these variables among high school students in the normalization stage of epidemic prevention and control. Therefore, this study aimed to establish an integrated model to describe the structural relationship between senior high school students’ duration of internet use, internet use experience, attitudes towards the internet and internet self-efficacy. A total of 640 Chinese high school students participated in this study. Through structural equation modelling, the results confirm that internet use experience is related to attitudes towards the internet and attitudes towards the internet are related to Internet self-efficacy. At the same time, it is confirmed that attitudes towards the internet-mediated the relationships between internet use experience and internet self-efficacy.