Validation of the Online Technologies Self-Efficacy Scale (OTSES).

Educational researchers have employed various self-efficacy instruments in a wide spectrum of disciplines and academic settings. However, self-efficacy measures specific to the online environment have not been developed yet. This paper provides a brief history of the online environment and discusses the development and validation of an instrument that measures online students' self-efficacy beliefs with communication technologies such as e-mail, Internet, and computer conferencing. Content validity, construct validity, and reliability were established in order to validate this instrument. Factor analysis and correlational analysis revealed that all items could be collapsed into one scale. This indicated that there is only one unified construct for self-efficacy. The Cronbach's Coefficient Alpha for the whole instrument was 0.95. The Online Technologies Self-Efficacy Scale (OTSES) is appended. Contains 26 references. (Author/AEF) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document.