Reliability of “Computer Attitude Skills” (Persian Form), Determining Its Factorial Structure and Correlation Between CAS and Personal Characteristics of Tehran Universities’ Students

The first purpose of this research was to measure the reliability of Computer Attitude Scale (CAS) for Iranian university students. The second purpose was to find out if there is a significant difference between gender of students, their university, and attitudes toward computer.
The CAS was administered to 577 (297 male and 280 female) Tehran, public and non - public undergraduate (freshman & sophomore) university students, which were selected through multistage random sampling. The instrument used was the Persian translation of CAS. This scale is a Likert-type scale of 30 positive and negative statements.
The data were analyzed using factor analysis, the analysis of variance, Scheffe test of group means and t – test.
Alpha reliability coefficients for three subscales of CAS, anxiety, confidence, and liking, were 0.83, 0.79, and 0.85 respectively and the reliability for the scale as a whole was 0.93. Validity of CAS was examined by exploratory factor analysis. Four factors were extracted using a principal components analysis with Varimax rotation. This solution accounted for 0.49 percent of variance.
Results indicated that there is a significant (p < .0/05) difference between male and female attitudes toward computer. Female students had a greater positive attitude than male students. Analysis of data further revealed that there is a significant (p < .05) difference between students attitudes from different universities.
It was recommended that additional research be conducted concerning age, prior experience with computer and field of study. And further revision of the CAS is suggested.