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A multivariate analysis of the effect of gender on computer anxiety among elementary school teachers
Author(s) -
Ursavaş Ömer Faruk,
Teo Timothy
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
british journal of educational technology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.79
H-Index - 95
eISSN - 1467-8535
pISSN - 0007-1013
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-8535.2010.01148.x
Subject(s) - library science , statistical analysis , sociology , psychology , mathematics education , humanities , computer science , philosophy , mathematics , statistics
Among the factors that influence information and communication technology (ICT) usage in education is computer anxiety (Gurcan‐Namlu & Ceyhan, 2003). From the literature, computer anxiety has been found to be associated with avoidance and a tendency to debilitate test performance (Mcilroy & Bunting, 2003), and it often results in negative feelings such as fear, stress and worry among computer users. Computer anxiety is a complex psychological construct and needs to be measured with multiple dimensions. Some examples are computer equipment anxiety, computer message anxiety and computer observing anxiety (McInerney, McInerney & Sinclair, 1994). While many studies have shown that men have lower levels of computer anxiety compared with women (eg, Baloglu & ve Cevik, 2008), some have found no significant differences between male and female users (Teo, 2006). When examining the factors that determined teachers' technology usage at school, Rosen and Weil (1995) found computer anxiety to be among the key drivers. Despite the consensus on the multidimensionality of computer anxiety, multivariate investigation in the literature is limited. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the multivariate affect of gender on computer anxiety among Turkish elementary school teachers, after controlling the possible effects of their computer experience.