This paper focuses on one of the factors that appears to be important in several conceptualizations of how to approach the digital divide: the differential possession of so-called Internet skills. Three largescale performance tests are conducted to reveal the contributions of gender, age, educational level of attainment, Internet experience, and amount of Internet use on both medium-and content-related Internet skills. Age appears to have a negative influence on medium-related skills. However, there is a positive contribution to the level of content-related skills, meaning that older generations perform better than the younger. Unfortunately, they are impeded by their low level of medium-related skills in such a way that the actual result is negative. This noteworthy conclusion, to our knowledge, has hardly received any attention in digital divide research. Educational attainment appears significant for both medium-and content-related Internet skills. This conclusion contrasts somewhat with other research that claims that people learn digital skills more in practice than in formal educational settings. Internet experience only contributes to medium-related skills. It appears that content-related skills do not grow with years of Internet experience and the number of hours spent online weekly. The latter only has some effect on medium-related skills.
The ARCS Model of Motivational Design has been used myriad times to design motivational instructions that focus on Attention, Relevance, Confidence, and Satisfaction in order to motivate students. The Instructional Materials Motivation Survey (IMMS) is a 36-item situational measure of people's reactions to instructional materials in the light of the ARCS Model. Although the IMMS has been used often, both as a pre-test and a posttest tool serving as either a motivational needs assessment prior to instruction or a measure of people's reactions to instructional materials afterwards, the IMMS so far has not been validated extensively, taking statistical and theoretical aspects of the survey into account. This article describes such an extensive validation study, for which the IMMS was used in a self-directed instructional setting aimed at working with technology (a cellular telephone). Results of structural equation modeling (SEM) show that the IMMS can be
Purpose -This paper aims to present the results of a study into the relationship between horizontal and vertical communication and professional and organisational identification. Design/methodology/approach -An empirical study was carried out at a large hospital in The Netherlands with multiple locations. Hospital employees (n ¼ 347) completed a written questionnaire. Findings -The results show that although employees identify more strongly with their profession than with their organisation, there is a positive connection between professional and organisational identification. Dimensions of vertical communication are important predictors of organisational identification, whereas dimensions of horizontal communication are important predictors of professional identification. Research limitations/ implications -Identification with the overall organisation does not depend primarily on the quality of contact with immediate colleagues within a work group or department; rather, it depends more on appreciation of the communication from and with the organisation's top management. Practical implications -Management should find a balance between communication about organisational goals and individual needs, which is crucial in influencing professional and organisational identification. Originality/value -Previous research has shown a positive link between the communication climate at a specific organisational level and the employee's identification with that level. The current study adds to this concept the influence of horizontal and vertical dimensions of communication on identification among different types of employees.
This study surveyed Dutch adolescents and adults about their video gaming behavior to assess the prevalence of problematic gaming. A representative national panel of 902 respondents aged 14 to 81 took part in the study. The results show that gaming in general is a wide-spread and popular activity among the Dutch population. Browser games (small games played via the internet) and offline casual games (e.g., offline card games) were reported as most popular type of game. Online games (e.g., massively multiplayer online role-playing games) are played by a relatively small part of the respondents, yet considerably more time is spent on these online games than on browser games, offline casual games, and offline games (e.g., offline racing games). The prevalence of problematic gaming in the total sample is 1.3 percent. Among adolescents and young adults problematic gaming occurs in 3.3 percent of cases. Particularly male adolescents seem to be more vulnerable to developing problematic gaming habits.
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