ATTITUDES TOWARDS COMPUTERS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AT 3 UNIVERSITIES IN GERMANY, BELGIUM, AND THE UNITED-STATES

Students' interest in computers and information technology is both a p rerequisite and a goal of successful qualification programs. The prese nt study was conducted to search for intercultural differences or cros s-cultural consistency of attitudes in this field, based on the Comput er and Information Technology Attitude Inventory (CITAI; Weinsier & Le utner, 1988). This instrument was developed to overcome theoretical an d methodological problems of usual Likert-type questionnaires by (a) h iding the object of measurement from the responding student and (b) by using a factorial or facet design for constructing 72 items (titles o f university short courses with and without reference to computers or information technology). Data on 529 students were collected at three universities in Germany, Belgium, and the U.S. Multidimensional scalin gs indicated high similarity of the interitem correlation structures a cross the three samples based on both point-to-point correspondences a nd facet theoretic regional analysis of the spaces. This cross-cultura l consistency underlines the construct validity of the questionnaire d esign. However, some intercultural differences were found - for instan ce, that European students have a strong preference for noncomputer as opposed to computer courses, whereas U.S. students do not have any pr eference. The results are discussed with regard to the initial hypothe sis that an object loses its feature of being a controversial theme wi th strong effects on attitudes if that object becomes more and more a component of the normal environment.