Do country-level characteristics affect adults’ level of ICT skills? A European comparison with a two-component measure of ICT skills

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

We study determinants of adults’ ICT skills in 19 European countries, focusing on the contextual level. We treat ICT skill proficiency – measured as problem-solving in technology-rich environments – and ICT use – a constructed index of ICT use in daily life and at work – as equally important components of effective ICT skills. To explain differences in adults' ICT skills across countries, we use existing micro-level theories and extend them by five explanatory factors at the contextual level: ICT access and infrastructure, ICT usage, technical skills demand, adult education infrastructure, and level of gender inequality. We apply our framework to data from the first cycle of the OECD's Programme of the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), which provides objective measures of adults' ICT skills. Both our linear multilevel regression analysis as well as our two-step regression models show that compared to the micro-level, the impact of the macro-level is rather limited. Only the technical skill demand of a country’s labor market shows a relevant and statistically significant impact on adults’ ICT skills in terms of ICT proficiency. Moreover, our results indicate that ICT proficiency and ICT usage are two different dimensions of the same concept, and one does not condition the other.