Introduction

This booklet is for educators who wish to measure attitudes toward information technology for one of more of the following groups:

a) K-12 students,
b) K-12 preservice/inservice teachers, or
c) University faculty.

Five instruments are provided for this purpose:

  1. The Young Children's Computer Inventory (YCCI)
  2. The Computer Attitude Questionnaire (CAQ)
  3. The Teachers' Attitudes Toward Computers Questionnaire (TAC)
  4. The Teachers' Attitudes Toward Information Technology Questionnaire (TAT)
  5. The Faculty Attitudes Toward Information Questionnaire (FAIT)


The instruments are intended to complement each other so that a profile of educators' attitudes and learner dispositions for an entire school system can be obtained, if desired. For example, the YCCI, CAQ and TAC each contain two computer attitude subscales that measure the same constructs in primary school children, middle school students, and teachers.

Various sections of the instruments employ Likert ('strongly disagree' to' strongly agree') items, Semantic Differential items (ratings along a continuum between opposite pairs), and paired comparisons items (forced choice between two alternatives). All operate on the principle that several items, when summed together, produce a more reliable index than a single item alone,and all are constructed so that each subscale can be used independently of the others.

These instruments have been developed and validated over the past eight years by researchers associated with the Texas Center for Educational Technology. All have built upon the work of previous scholars in many states and nations. Three of the five were developed in conjunction with doctoral dissertations, while a fourth was a product of a two-year research initiative funded by the Matthews Chair for Research in Education at the University of North Texas. All have been validated in numerous state, national, and international studies, and two of the development efforts were recognized by awards from the American Educational Research Association (YCCI, 1991) and the Society for Information Technology in Teacher Education (TAC, 1997).

A web site which contains downloadable copies of the instruments as well as findings from studies which have used them is maintained by the Texas Center for Educational Technology at http://www.tcet.unt.edu/research. Educators may duplicate and use them free of charge. We request only that those who use the instruments:

a) give proper credit to their source(s), and
b) share with the authors and others the results of their findings.

Knezek, G., Christensen, R., and Miyashita, K. (1998). Instruments for Assessing Attitudes Toward Information Technology. Denton, TX: Texas Center for Educational Technology.

Additional Software

Acrobat Reader Adobe Acrobat Reader for any of the documents that require a PDF reader available free at Adobe's Web site.