Measurement Invariance of the Digital Natives Assessment Scale Across Gender in a Sample of Turkish University Students

Abstract

With reference to the digital natives' debate, there is a gap on digital natives' characteristics. To fill this gap, the Digital Natives Assessment Scale was developed to measure students' assessment of the degree to which they perceived themselves to possess the attributes of digital natives. The scale was developed within the Turkish language and requires further validation in cross-cultural adaptation processes. Moreover, to ensure scale validity, empirical investigation to test for invariance across different subgroups is required to engender confidence in the generalizability of the measure. This study aimed to provide initial validation of the Turkish Digital Natives Assessment Scale as a current measure for preservice teachers and to examine scale invariance across gender given that gender has been identified as an important contextual factor when studying digital natives' characteristics and use of digital technology. Confirmatory factor analyses and measurement invariance analyses across gender for cross-validation were performed. The confirmatory factor analysis results showed that a four-factor structure was confirmed for female and male preservice teachers together and female and male preservice teachers separately. In relation to measurement invariance, the results of the current study indicated support for configural invariance, metric invariance, and scalar invariance by gender.