Validating the Persian Version of ICT Engagement Questionnaire

Background: Considering the importance of ICT engagement in learning environments, it is necessary to have a reliable and valid method of evaluating it among students. ICT Engagement questionnaire (Zylka et al.) has been designed for this purpose. This study aimed to validate that questionnaire in a representative sample of Iranian students. Methods: The Questionnaire was translated into Persian and its face and content validities were assessed by the members of Education faculty at the University of Tabriz, Iran. Its population included the University's faculty members and the students studying in technical and vocational schools in Urmia, Iran. Eight experts were selected from faculty members by means of purposeful sampling for face and content validities, and 370 students were selected by cluster random sampling. The research tool was Zylka et al's ICT Engagement Questionnaire. SPSS 26 was used for data analysis. Results: The students’ ages ranged from 16 to 18 and 38.6% of them were male and 61.4% were female. The reliability of the questionnaire was 0.91 based on the Cronbach’s alpha. The results of exploratory factor analysis revealed that five factors of ICT in Zylka et al's questionnaire were similar to seven factors in the present study, namely positive ICT self-esteem (explained variance=29.87%), self-confidence in ICT (explained variance=6.84%), online exposure (explained variance=4.69%), social exposure (explained variance=3.83%), interest in computers, tablets and mobile phones (explained variance=3.46%), spending time on ICT (explained variance=3.36%), and the negative ICT self-concept (explained variance=3.18%). Conclusion: PCA results revealed that seven factors can affect ICT engagement. In total these seven factors account for 55.19% of the variance in ICT engagement. Validating the questionnaire reveals that the constructs of “ICT engagement” may vary among populations in different countries. This might be due to the cultural differences and disparities between two statistical populations in terms of available facilities and resources.