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University Students’ Internet Attitudes and Internet

Self-Efficacy: A Study at Three Universities in Taiwan

YING-TIEN WU, M.Ed. and CHIN-CHUNG TSAI, ED.D.

ABSTRACT

This study was conducted to explore university students’ attitudes and self-efficacy toward the Internet. Moreover, the relationships between their attitudes and self-efficacy toward the Internet were also investigated. The sample of this study included 1,313 students, coming from three universities in Taiwan. It was found that male students expressed significantly more positive attitudes than females on their “perceived control” of the Internet. The male students also revealed better Internet self-efficacy than their female counterparts. Moreover, students having more on-line hours per week, in general, displayed more positive Internet attitudes and Internet self-efficacy. In addition, students’ grade level also played an impor-tant role in their Internet attitudes; graduate students tended to possess more positive Inter-net attitudes. More importantly, students’ InterInter-net attitudes were highly correlated with their Internet self-efficacy. The results in this study seemed to reveal that students’ attitudes to-ward the Internet could be viewed as one of the important indicators for predicting their In-ternet self-efficacy. It is also suggested that some training programs or courses may be helpful in improving university students’ attitudes and self-efficacy toward the Internet.

441 Volume 9, Number 4, 2006

© Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.

INTRODUCTION

I

N THE LAST TWO DECADES, rapid developments in information technology, such as the Internet, have made considerable and dramatic impact on contemporary educational practice.1–3 For exam-ple, the Web-based learning where educators inte-grate the Internet into instructional practice can not only provide learners with distant, interactive, broad, individualized and inquiry-oriented learn-ing activities, but also promote their knowledge construction and meaningful learning.4,5 As the Internet is broadly used for educational purposes, learners may have more rich experiences of utiliz-ing the Internet. However, while students have in-creasingly more opportunities to utilize the Internet to enhance their learning outcomes, stud-ies about the nature of learners’ Web use have not kept pace with their usage of the Internet.6As a

re-sult, the nature of students’ Web use, such as their perceptions, attitudes and self-efficacy toward the Internet, should be highlighted by educational re-searchers.

Undoubtedly, appropriate attitude toward the Internet is a prerequisite for successful Internet-based instruction. Previous studies have revealed that the attitude toward a new technology plays an important role in its acceptance and usage.7For ex-ample, students’ attitudes toward the Internet may influence their motivation and interests toward learning to use the Internet, or vice versa.8Over the past decade, researchers have largely explored learners’ attitudes toward computers.7,9,10 How-ever, comparatively fewer studies have been con-ducted to investigate students’ attitudes toward the Internet.11–13 Therefore, one of the major purposes of the present study was to assess university stu-dents’ Internet attitudes.

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Moreover, gender differences in computer-related issues are always important issues for edu-cators. Relevant studies have indicated that male students, in general, have more positive computer-related attitudes. For instance, male students per-ceived lower computer anxiety, and more positive attitudes toward computer than female students.14,15 However, still not many studies investigated learn-ers’ gender differences in Internet-related issues.11,16 Hence, gender differences on university students’ Internet attitudes were also explored in this study.

“Self-efficacy” refers to an individual learner’s beliefs and expectations in his/her capability to perform in a task; and self-efficacy influences peo-ple’s choice of activities, how much effort they will expend, and how long they will sustain effort in dealing with stressful situations.17,18 In the past, self-efficacy has been an important issue in educa-tional research. For example, teachers’ self-efficacy, affecting their teaching performance and students’ learning, has been a topic of much research for approximately 25 years.19,20 Also, students’ self-efficacy, which can be used to effectively predict their academic performance, has also been largely investigated.21While students may have increasing opportunities to learn by utilizing the Internet in Web-based instruction, their self-efficacy regarding the Internet, which may have profound impact on their learning outcomes, should become an impor-tant research topic for educators and researchers.

The Internet self-efficacy indicates Web users’ self-perceived confidence and expectations of using the Internet. It has been proposed that learners with high efficacy expectations may have a greater chance of success in computer and Internet-related tasks.22,23 Consequently, students’ self-efficacy in utilizing technology-related (such as computer and the Internet) tasks has received growing attention among educational researchers.23–27 Among these relevant studies, students’ computer self-efficacy has been investigated, but Internet self-efficacy is a relatively new issue for researchers. Hence, the cur-rent study also investigated students’ Internet self-efficacy and its gender differences.

In addition, “the relationships between com-puter attitudes and comcom-puter self-efficacy,” “the re-lationships between computer attitudes and Internet self-efficacy,” and “the relationships be-tween Internet attitudes and computer self-efficacy” have been examined in several pervious studies.27–29It has been found that students’ com-puter attitudes are positively correlated with their computer self-efficacy.29Also, learners with greater computer self-efficacy may have more positive atti-tudes toward the Internet; and male students tend

to have greater computer self-efficacy and more positive attitudes toward the Internet than female students.28In addition, learners with more positive attitudes toward computers tend to display better Internet self-efficacy than their counterparts.27 However, the relationships between students’ In-ternet attitudes and their InIn-ternet self-efficacy were not investigated by these relevant studies. There-fore, the relationships between university students’ Internet attitudes and their Internet self-efficacy were examined in this study.

In sum, by gathering questionnaire responses from 1,313 students in three universities in Tai-wan, the present study addressed the following questions:

1. What are the university students’ Internet atti-tudes?

2. Is there any gender difference in university stu-dents’ Internet attitudes? How?

3. What is the Internet self-efficacy expressed by the students?

4. Is there any gender difference in university stu-dents’ Internet self-efficacy? How?

5. What are the relationships (if any) between uni-versity students’ Internet attitudes and their In-ternet self-efficacy? How?

METHODS Sample

The sample of this study included 1,313 univer-sity students with different Internet experiences (consisting of 860 males and 453 females) in Tai-wan. They were either undergraduate or graduate students (including 893 college students and 420 graduate students), coming from three famous na-tional universities in Taiwan. Among the 893 col-lege students, 320 were freshmen and sophomores, while the rest of them (n = 573) were juniors and se-niors. As these universities are science or technol-ogy-oriented, there were much more male students than female students in the sample.

Instrument

To assess students’ Internet attitudes and their Internet self-efficacy, two instruments were imple-mented in this study. The sample subjects’ attitudes toward the Internet were assessed by the Internet Attitudes Survey (IAS), while the Internet Self-efficacy Survey (ISS) was used to measure their In-ternet self-efficacy.

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The Internet Attitudes Survey (IAS) imple-mented in this study was revised from the original one developed in the previous study.16 In the origi-nal version, the IAS consisted of 18 questionnaire items with four scales, including “perceived useful-ness,” “affection,” “perceived control,” and “be-havior” (consisting of, respectively, 5, 5, 5, and 3 items).16 The current study slightly modified the original version of IAS, and the fourth scale of IAS was extended to five items. Consequently, the IAS administered in this study included four scales, with five items per scale initially. The items of these scales were presented in a six-point Likert scale, ranging from “strongly agree,” “agree,” “some-what agree,” “some“some-what disagree,” “disagree,” to “strongly disagree.” The use of such a 1–6-Likert scale not only avoided totally neutral responses, but also differentiated students’ variations of agreement in greater detail. The four scales used were as follows:

1. Perceived usefulness scale: assessing students’ per-ceptions about the positive impacts of the Inter-net on individuals and society. A sample item of this scale is “The Internet makes a great contri-bution to human life.”

2. Affection scale: measuring students’ feeling and anxiety for using the Internet. A sample item of this scale is “The Internet makes me feel uncom-fortable.”

3. Perceived control scale: investigating students’ confidence about the independent control of the usage of the Internet. A sample item of this scale is “I can use the Internet independently, without the assistance of others.”

4. Behavior scale: assessing students’ perceived ac-tual practice and frequency of using the Internet. A sample item of this scale is “I spend much time on using the Internet.”

The Internet Self-Efficacy Survey (ISS), employed in this study, was modified from previous stud-ies.11,23The ISS implemented in this study included two scales, consisting of five and four items respec-tively. The items of the two scales were presented with bipolar strongly confident/strongly unconfi-dent statements in a six-point Likert mode. The two scales were as follows:

1. General self-efficacy scale: measuring students’ self-efficacy in general, such as using Internet-related tools. A sample item of this scale is “I am good at searching information on the Internet.” 2. Communicative self-efficacy scale: assessing stu-dents’ confidence and expectation of

Internet-based communication or interaction. A sample item of this scale is “I think I can talk to others in online chatrooms.”

Statistical analysis

To clarify the structures of the two constructs in this study (i.e., Internet attitudes and Internet self-efficacy), exploratory analyses were conducted on the data. A series of t-tests were used to make gen-der comparisons on the construct scales. The role of Internet experiences and student grade levels on these scales were examined by ANOVA F-tests. In addition, a series of correlation analyses were also conducted to examine the relationships between these two constructs (i.e., Internet attitudes and In-ternet self-efficacy).

RESULTS Factor analysis

To clarify the structure of students’ Internet atti-tudes, the principle component analysis was uti-lized as the extraction method, with the rotation method of varimax with Kasier normalization. An item would be retained, if the factor loading of the item was larger than 0.5 in the relevant scale and smaller than 0.5 in the non-relevant scale. The sults of factor analyses revealed that students’ re-sponses in the Internet Attitudes Survey (IAS) were grouped into four factors, which were “perceived usefulness scales,” “affection scale,” “perceived control scale,” and “behavior scale.” The initial 20 items were reduced to 19, and there were, respec-tively, 5, 5, 5, and 4 items in the four scales of IAS. The factor loadings for retained items are presented in Table 1. The four scales were exactly the same as the original version,16 and they accounted for 59.81% of variance totally.

The reliability (alpha) coefficients for the four scales respectively were 0.78, 0.83, 0.78, and 0.80, and the overall alpha was 0.86. Moreover, in this study, the alpha in the fourth scale of IAS (alpha = 0.80) was much higher than that reported in the original version (alpha = 0.49).16 Therefore, these scales were deemed to be sufficiently reliable for assessing students’ Internet attitudes.

Similarly, exploratory analysis was adopted to clarify the structure of the Internet self-efficacy. By the method mentioned above, students’ responses in the Internet Self-efficacy Survey (ISS) were grouped into two factors: “general self-efficacy” and “communicative self-efficacy.” There were five

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and four items in these two scales respectively. The factor loadings for the items of these two scales are shown in Table 2, and in total, 71% variance was ex-plained by these two scales. In addition, the alpha coefficients for these two scales were 0.90 and 0.85, respectively, and for the entire ISS questionnaire was 0.91, indicating that these scales were consid-ered as adequately reliable for surveying students’ Internet self-efficacy.

Students’ scores on the scales

Table 3 shows students’ average scores and stan-dard deviations on the scales of the IAS. Students attained similar high scores on the perceived use-fulness scale (an average of 5.07 per item), the be-havior scale (an average of 5.06 per item), and the affection scale (an average of 5.04 per item) in the 1–6-Likert measurement. Although students scored relatively lower in the perceived control scale (an average of 4.49 per item), the average score was still higher than the mean of 1–6-Likert scale (i.e., 3.5). The results indicated that students, in general, TABLE1. ROTATEDFACTORLOADINGS ANDCRONBACH’S VALUES FOR THEFOUR

SCALES OFINTERNETATTITUDESURVEY(N= 1313)

Item Factor 1 Factor 2 Factor 3 Factor 4

Factor 1: Perceive usefulness,  = 0.78

Perceive use 1 0.650 Perceive use 2 0.717 Perceive use 3 0.718 Perceive use 4 0.707 Perceive use 5 0.701 Factor 2: Affection,  = 0.83 Affection 1 0.750 Affection 2 0.810 Affection 3 0.806 Affection 4 0.669 Affection 5 0.651

Factor 3: Perceived control,  = 0.78

Perceived con 1 0.650 Perceived con 2 0.565 Perceived con 3 0.771 Perceived con 4 0.765 Perceived con 5 0.771 Factor 4: Behavior,  = 0.80 Behavior 1 0.542 Behavior 2 0.830 Behavior 3 0.774 Behavior 4 0.765 Percentage of variance 31.39 11.54 10.09 6.79

Overall  = 0.86. Total variance explained is 59.81%.

TABLE2. ROTATEDFACTORLOADINGS AND CRONBACH’S VALUES FOR THETWOSCALES OF

INTERNETSELF-EFFICACYSURVEY(N= 1313)

Factor 1 Factor 2 Factor 1: General self-efficacy,  = 0.90

General 1 0.830

General 2 0.794

General 3 0.762

General 4 0.779

General 5 0.748

Factor 2: Communicative self-efficacy,  = 0.85

Communicative 1 0.787

Communicative 2 0.768

Communicative 3 0.582

Communicative 4 0.840

Percentage of variance 61.21 9.80 Overall  = 0.91. Total variance explained is 71%.

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displayed positive attitudes regarding the useful-ness of using the Internet, the control of using the Internet, and they also have positive affection when using the Internet. In addition, they also showed frequent behavior of using the Internet.

Table 3 also presents students’ average scores and standard deviations on the scales of the ISS. Students had high scores on two ISS scales, but stu-dents, on average, attained higher scores on the general self-efficacy scale (an average of 5.54 per item) than those on the communicative self-efficacy scale (an average of 5.19 per item). The results im-plied that university students in this study tended to display high confidence and expectation of using the Internet for general and communicative pur-poses. Furthermore, they might show higher confi-dence and expectation of using the Internet for general purposes than those for communicative purposes.

Gender differences on Internet attitudes and Internet self-efficacy

The gender differences on IAS responses were examined, presented in Table 4. The results showed that these two gender groups of students only showed statistical differences on the “perceived control’ scale” (p < 0.001), indicating that the male students, on average, scored higher on this scale than the female students did. It implied that male students expressed stronger beliefs regarding the independent control of the usage of Internet than female students. However, it has been reported that high school students of different genders showed significant differences on their scores on the “affec-tion,” “perceived control,” and “behavior’ scales” (p < 0.05) in the previous study.16 The findings in this study were somewhat different from those of the previous study. Unlike high school students, university students of different genders did not show significant differences in their feelings, anxi-ety and perceived usefulness when using the Inter-net; and no significant differences were found between these two groups of students in their ac-tual practice and frequency of using the Internet as well.

Furthermore, the differences between male and female students’ scores on the two scales of the ISS were also explored. Table 4 revealed that these two groups of students had significant differences on both the “general self-efficacy” scale and the “com-municative self-efficacy” scale (p < 0.05), and male students attained higher scores on both scales than female students. The results indicated the male stu-dents in this study expressed significantly higher confidence and expectation of using the Internet for TABLE3. STUDENTS’ SCORES ON THESCALES

OF THEINTERNETATTITUDESURVEY AND THEINTERNETSELF-EFFICACYSURVEY

Mean SD Internet attitude Perceived usefulness 5.07 0.61 Affection 5.04 0.70 Perceived control 4.49 0.74 Behavior 5.06 0.72 Internet self-efficacy General self-efficacy 5.54 0.60 Communicative self-efficacy 5.19 0.85

TABLE4. GENDERCOMPARISONS ON THESCALES OF THEINTERNETATTITUDESURVEY AND THEINTERNETSELF-EFFICACYSURVEY

Male Female

(mean, SD) (mean, SD) t value

Internet attitude Perceived usefulness 5.10 (0.64) 5.05 (0.55) 0.74 (n.s.) Affection 5.02 (0.72) 5.08 (0.65) 1.45 (n.s.) Perceived control 4.58 (0.74) 4.30 (0.71) 6.61*** Behavior 5.07 (0.74) 5.03 (0.68) 0.88 (n.s.) Internet self-efficacy General self-efficacy 5.56 (0.59) 5.50 (0.61) 1.99* Communicative self-efficacy 5.23 (0.83) 5.12 (0.87) 2.35* *p < 0.05. ***p < 0.001.

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both general and communicative purposes than did the female students.

Role of Internet experiences on Internet attitudes and Internet self-efficacy

In this study, the interplay between students’ In-ternet attitudes and their InIn-ternet experiences was also investigated. The amount of the participant’s on-line hours in average per week was defined as his/her Internet experience. In this study, the stu-dents were divided into five groups of different In-ternet experiences: <14 h, 14–21 h, 21–28 h, 28–35 h, and finally >35 h. Then, the analyses between dif-ferent Internet experience groups and their Internet attitudes were conducted, and the results are pre-sented in Table 5.

The ANOVA tests revealed that Internet experi-ence played a statistically significant role on all of the IAS scales (p < 0.001). A series of Scheffe tests (post hoc tests) further indicated that students hav-ing more time of ushav-ing the Internet, in general, tended to have statistically higher scores on all of the four scales of perceived usefulness, affection scale, perceived control, and behavior. Particularly, students’ Internet experience (i.e., their hours of using the Internet) was highly related to their scores on the “behavior” scale, their perceived be-havior of using the Internet (F = 64.70, p < 0.001),

and it was revealed that students with more Inter-net experiences tended to attain higher scores on the “behavior” scale. This finding also provided ev-idence for sufficient criterion-related validity of IAS administered in this study. Moreover, students, who had more Internet experiences, tended to ex-press more positive feeling, lower anxiety and in-dependent control toward the usage of Internet (i.e., affection and perceived control scales). It im-plies that learners’ abundant Internet experience might help them feel more confident for controlling the Internet.

Table 5 also presents the comparison of Internet self-efficacy among students’ Internet experience groups. The ANOVA tests showed that students’ Internet experience also played a significant role on both scales of the ISS, that is, “general self-efficacy” and “communicative self-efficacy” (p < 0.05). Through a series of Scheffe tests, it was found that students who spent more time of using the Internet per week tended to attain higher scores on the both self-efficacy scales. Students’ Internet experiences helped them enhance not only their general self-efficacy but also communicative self-self-efficacy to-ward the Internet. In particular, the Scheffe tests showed that students’ Internet experiences were highly related to their communicative self-efficacy, as more significant differences were found among the Internet experience groups in this scale.

TABLE5. STUDENTS’ INTERNETATTITUDES ANDINTERNETSELF-EFFICACY AMONGGROUPS OFDIFFERENT INTERNETEXPERIENCES

Perceived Perceived General Communicative

On-line hours usefulness Affection control Behavior self-efficacy self-efficacy

per week (mean, SD) (mean, SD) (mean, SD) (mean, SD) (mean, SD) (mean, SD)

(1) Less than 4.97 (0.60) 4.83 (0.65) 4.22 (0.73) 4.57 (0.69) 5.42 (0.59) 4.97 (0.88) 14 h (n = 260) (2) 14–21 h 5.01 (0.56) 5.03 (0.64) 4.43 (0.72) 4.93 (0.63) 5.55 (0.56) 5.23 (0.84) (n = 287) (3) 21–28 h 5.11 (0.53) 5.05 (0.67) 4.58 (0.68) 5.12 (0.53) 5.56 (0.59) 5.26 (0.81) (n = 192) (4) 28–35 h 5.07 (0.67) 4.97 (0.81) 4.49 (0.76) 5.21 (0.67) 5.54 (0.59) 5.14 (0.87) (n = 237) (5) More than 35 h 5.18 (0.63) 5.26 (0.66) 4.69 (0.73) 5.40 (0.69) 5.60 (0.63) 5.33 (0.80) (n = 337) F (ANOVA) 5.51*** 15.73*** 16.92*** 64.70*** 3.31* 7.56*** Scheffe Test (5) > (1) (5) > (2) > (1) (5) > (2) > (1) (5) > (2) > (1) (5) > (1) (2) > (1) (5)>(2) (5)>(3) >(1) (5)>(4) >(1) (5)>(3) >(1) (3)>(1) (5)>(4) (3) > (1) (5) > (4) > (1) (5) > (1) (4) > (2) *p < 0.05. ***p < 0.001.

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Role of grade levels on Internet attitudes and Internet self-efficacy

In this study, the relationships between students’ Internet attitudes and their grade levels were also explored. First, students were divided into three groups of different grade levels: the freshmen and sophomore (n = 320), the junior and senior (n = 573), and the graduate (n = 420). Then, a series of ANOVA test analyses were conducted to evaluate the possi-ble interactions of grade level and Internet attitude (as well as Internet self-efficacy). The results of the analyses between different grade level groups and their Internet attitudes are presented in Table 6.

The ANOVA tests showed that grade level played a role on all the four scales of the IAS (p < 0.05). The follow-up Scheffe tests also revealed that graduate students’ Internet attitudes were signifi-cantly better than those expressed by college stu-dents. Moreover, the results in Table 6 also indicated that students’ grade level might not be related to their Internet self-efficacy.

Correlation between Internet attitude and Internet self-efficacy

According to Table 7, students’ responses on each scale of the IAS were all significantly positively cor-related with their responses on the “general

self-efficacy” scale of ISS (r > 0.30, p < 0.001). The results indicated that the students expressing more posi-tive perceptions, less anxiety, better control, and fre-quent usage toward the Internet would display higher general self-efficacy regarding the Internet. Among these four scales, the students’ responses on the “perceived control” scale had the highest corre-lation with their responses on the “general self-effi-cacy” scale (r = 0.37, p < 0.001), suggesting that students having more confidence about the inde-pendent control of using the Internet would show higher general self-efficacy regarding the Internet. Also, the results in Table 7 indicated that stu-dents’ responses on each scale of the IAS were all significantly correlated with their responses on the “communicative self-efficacy” scale of ISS (p < 0.001). In particular, their responses on the “behav-ior” scale were relatively highly correlated with that on the “communicative self-efficacy” scale (r = 0.30, p < 0.001). It seemed that students, using the Inter-net more frequently, might tend to attain better communicative self-efficacy regarding the Internet.

DISCUSSION

The IAS and the ISS administered in this study are deemed to be sufficiently reliable for assessing TABLE6. STUDENTS’ INTERNETATTITUDES ANDINTERNETSELF-EFFICACY AMONGGROUPS OFDIFFERENTGRADES

Perceived Perceived General Communicative

usefulness Affection control Behavior self-efficacy self-efficacy

Grade (mean, SD) (mean, SD) (mean, SD) (mean, SD) (mean, SD) (mean, SD)

(1) Freshmen & 5.05 (0.69) 5.02 (0.64) 4.30 (0.80) 5.10 (0.75) 5.50 (0.66) 5.19 (0.86) Sophomore

(2) Junior & senior 5.03 (0.58) 5.00 (0.73) 4.42 (0.73) 4.99 (0.72) 5.53 (0.58) 5.18 (0.84) (3) Graduate 5.14 (0.57) 5.12 (0.69) 4.72 (0.65) 5.12 (0.68) 5.57 (0.57) 5.20 (0.85) F (ANOVA) 4.41* 4.25* 33.77*** 4.41* 1.47 0.10 Scheffe Test (3) > (2) (3) > (2) (3) > (1) (3) > (2) (3) > (2) *p < 0.05. ***p < 0.001.

TABLE7. CORRELATION BETWEENSTUDENTS’ INTERNETATTITUDES ANDTHEIRINTERNETSELF-EFFICACY

Perceived usefulness Affection Perceived control Behavior

General self-efficacy 0.32*** 0.36*** 0.37*** 0.35***

Communicative self-efficacy 0.24*** 0.29*** 0.29*** 0.30***

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students’ Internet attitudes and their Internet self-efficacy respectively. By means of these two instru-ments, the present study explored a group of Taiwan university students’ Internet attitudes and Internet self-efficacy. It has been proposed that learners’ attitudes toward the Internet may influ-ence their motivation and interests toward learning to use the Internet,8which in turn affect their per-formance in Web-based learning environments. Moreover, individuals with high Internet self-efficacy may display better performance in Web-based learning tasks.23 However, students in the present study scored relatively low on the “per-ceived control” scale of the IAS and the “commu-nicative self-efficacy” scale of the ISS. These results probably suggest that educators should try to find some effective ways to improve students’ indepen-dent control of using the Internet and their capacity of Internet-based communication and interaction in Internet-based environments. Previous studies have revealed the effects of training on Internet self-efficacy and computer user attitudes.27 There-fore, it may be practicable for educators to enhance learners’ attitudes and self-efficacy toward the In-ternet by utilizing similar training programs.

This study also examined gender differences among university students on their attitudes and self-efficacy regarding the Internet. In a previous study,16high school students displayed gender dif-ferences on their affection, perceived control, and behavior of using the Internet, favoring males than females. However, the results derived from this study revealed that the female students did not show significant differences on their affection, per-ceived usefulness and behavior of using the Inter-net from males. They had gender difference only on their perceived control of the Internet. Many re-search reports (including the present study) have revealed that students with more Internet experi-ences tended to express more positive Internet atti-tudes.16,30 Therefore, these findings might be due to the plausible fact that university students had more Internet experiences than high school stu-dents. It seems that the accumulated Internet expe-riences may be helpful in narrowing the gender difference. Moreover, the male students in this study also displayed higher Internet self-efficacy than the females. This finding was consistent with those in the previous studies concerning gender differences in computer self-efficacy and Internet self-efficacy.27,28 Therefore, educators should, in particular, pay more attention to enhancing female students’ perceived control and self-efficacy re-garding the Internet.

Moreover, it was revealed that the graduate stu-dents, in general, showed more positive attitudes toward the Internet than the college students in this study. However, the grade differences were not found in university students’ self-efficacy toward the Internet. That is, the graduate students did not show significantly better Internet self-efficacy than the college students.

In this study, the relationships between univer-sity students’ Internet attitudes and their Internet self-efficacy were also examined. Educators and re-searchers have proposed that learners with high In-ternet efficacy expectations may have a greater chance of success in Internet-related tasks.22,23 In other words, students’ Internet self-efficacy can be viewed as one of the important indicators for pre-dicting their performance in these tasks. The find-ings in this study revealed that university students’ attitudes toward the Internet were significantly positively correlated with their Internet self-efficacy. It seemed to suggest that students’ atti-tudes toward the Internet could be viewed as one of the important indicators for predicting their In-ternet self-efficacy. In particular, students, attaining better attitudes toward their independent control of using the Internet, may have higher general In-ternet self-efficacy.

As described previously, the female students in this study were found to have lower general Inter-net self-efficacy and less confidence about their in-dependent control of using the Internet than the male students. It might be plausible that if female students’ independent control of using the Internet is enhanced, their general self-efficacy may be also improved, or vice versa. In other words, these two aspects are likely mutually supported.

Based on the results in Table 5, learners’ Internet experiences may help their perceived control of using the Internet. In addition, it was also re-vealed that students, who used the Internet more frequently, tended to attain better communicative self-efficacy regarding the Internet. Thus, stu-dents’ actual Internet usage might help them de-velop adequate self-efficacy for Internet-based communication.

Nowadays, Internet-based instruction is fre-quently implemented in higher education. The findings in this study may provide some insights for educators regarding their Web-based instruc-tional practice. As what has been revealed in previ-ous studies, both students’ Internet attitudes and their Internet self-efficacy may influence their per-formance in Web-based learning environments or tasks.16,23,27 Hence, learners’ appropriate attitudes

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and adequate self-efficacy toward the Internet may be one critical prerequisite for the Internet-based instruction. Educators should try to enhance stu-dents’ Internet attitudes and self-efficacy; it follows that they are expected to attain better learning out-comes in these learning environments or tasks. In particular, as students’ attitudes toward the Inter-net and their InterInter-net self-efficacy are highly re-lated, some training programs or courses may be helpful to improve university students’ Internet at-titudes and self-efficacy at the same time.

Limitations

This study explored university students’ Internet attitudes and their self-efficacy toward the Internet. However, due to the characteristics of the sample in this study, caution must be used when interpreting the results. First, the participants in this study came from three famous national universities in Taiwan. On average, they outperformed their counterparts in other universities of Taiwan in various aspects. Moreover, as the three universities in this study are science- or technology-oriented, most of the uni-versity students in this study majored in science or technology. Thus, the results derived from this study should be carefully interpreted.

In addition, with two questionnaires, the current study was undertaken by quantitative measures. The results in this study may not be sufficient to provide in-depth insights into students’ Internet at-titudes and self-efficacy toward the Internet. To this end, further study should be conducted utilizing a qualitative research approach.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Funding of this research work was, in part, sup-ported by the National Science Council, Taiwan (grants NSC 92–2524-S-009–003 and NSC 93–2524-S-009–003).

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Addess reprint requests to: Dr. Chin-Chung Tsai Institute of Education & Center for Teacher Education

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數據

Table 3 shows students’ average scores and stan- stan-dard deviations on the scales of the IAS
Table 3 also presents students’ average scores and standard deviations on the scales of the ISS
Table 5 also presents the comparison of Internet self-efficacy among students’ Internet experience groups

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