A Study on the Development of a Digital Citizenship Scale in Elementary Schools

In today's society, children and adolescents spend a significant amount of time using digital technologies. To responsibly communicate, learn, work, and play in this environment, they must develop a variety of competencies to utilize digital technologies and overcome potential pitfalls. Furthermore, it is crucial that students learn how to navigate the online world in a healthy and critical manner, understand the impact of digital media, respect privacy and intellectual property rights, and develop positive communication skills in digital environments. This study presents a carefully calibrated digital citizenship scale that can measure students' abilities, awareness, and participation levels within internet-based communities. The results of this study are summarized as follows. First, the digital citizenship scale consists of a seven-factor model with 28 items extracted through exploratory factor analysis. Second, the seven factors are internet political activity, technological competence, online self-efficacy, online identity, digital literacy, networking agency, and digital etiquette. Third, the seven factors of the digital citizenship scale were correlated and significant in their results.