Development of the “Scale for the assessment of non-experts’ AI literacy” – An exploratory factor analysis

Artificial Intelligence competencies will become increasingly important in the near future. Therefore, it is essential that the AI literacy of individuals can be assessed in a valid and reliable way. This study presents the development of the "Scale for the assessment of non-experts' AI literacy" (SNAIL). An existing AI literacy item set was distributed as an online questionnaire to a heterogeneous group of non-experts (i.e., individuals without a formal AI or computer science education). Based on the data collected, an exploratory factor analysis was conducted to investigate the underlying latent factor structure. The results indicated that a three-factor model had the best model fit. The individual factors reflected AI competencies in the areas of "Technical Understanding", "Critical Appraisal", and "Practical Application". In addition, eight items from the original questionnaire were deleted based on high intercorrelations and low communalities to reduce the length of the questionnaire. The final SNAIL-questionnaire consists of 31 items that can be used to assess the AI literacy of individual non-experts or specific groups and is also designed to enable the evaluation of AI literacy courses' teaching effectiveness.