Pretesting of special module on ICT at work, working conditions & learning digital skills (English Version)

English version:

Which of the following statements would best describe your digital skills at work?

German version:

Welche der folgenden Aussagen beschreibt am besten Ihre digitalen Kompetenzen am Arbeitsplatz?

English version:

Please tick one answer value

German version:

Bitte kreuzen Sie nur eine Antwortmöglichkeit an

English version:
I need further training to cope well with my duties
My actual digital skills correspond well with my duties
I have the digital skills to cope with more demanding duties

German version:
Ich benötige Weiterbildung, um meinen Aufgaben gerecht zu werden
Meine digitalen Kompetenzen entsprechen meinem momentanen Aufgabenprofil gut
Ich habe die digitalen Kompetenzen, um auch anspruchsvollere Aufgaben zu bewältigen

Question: Respondents seem to associate a variety of different skills with the term ‘digital skills.’ We classify this term as a very vague term which needs to be further specified depending on the questionnaire designers’ definition of ‘digital skills.’
Answer categories: No changes recommended.

Cognitive Techniques:

Comprehension Probing.

Question 9 asked respondents which statement would best describe their digital skills at work. Respondents could choose between the statements “I need further training to cope well with my duties,” “My actual digital skills correspond well with my duties,” and “I have the digital skills to cope with more demanding duties.” The statements were exclusive categories and, therefore, percentages add up to 100 percent. Roughly a quarter of the British respondents (24.59 percent) and 13.79 percent of the German respondents stated that their digital skills at work could be described with the phrase “I need further training to cope well with my duties.” Most of the respondents in both countries felt that their skills correspond well with their duties (British respondents: 57.38 percent, German respondents: 67.24 percent). Around a fifth of British and German respondents even considered their digital skills to allow them to cope with more demanding duties (British respondents: 18.03 percent, German respondents: 18.97 percent).

Only respondents that selected the response “Yes” at question 3 received question 9. As a consequence, 26 respondents (14 English speaking respondents and 12 German speaking respondents) did not receive this question due to the filter in question 3. For question 9, we asked a comprehension probe (Probe 10) that all respondents received who chose either the statement “I need further training to cope well with my duties” or “I have the digital skills to cope with more demanding duties.” That is, respondents that selected the statement “My actual digital skills correspond well with my duties” did not receive this probe. In total, 26 British and 19 German respondents provided an answer to this probe.

The intention of Probe 10 was to check whether the term 'digital skills' is consistently understood by all respondents. Therefore, Probe 10 asked the respondents to explain what skills they consider to be ‘digital skills.’ Overall, there seems to be a very heterogeneous understanding of the term ‘digital skills.’ On the one hand, some respondents show a very broad understanding of the term. Respondents that fall in this category defined the term ‘digital skills’ as computer skills (10 British and 3 German respondents) or software skills (5 British and 4 German respondents). Some respondents also mentioned in this context that a person with digital skills should be able to work with computer equipment, such as a keyboard (3 British respondents) or should be able to use the internet (4 British respondents, 1 German respondent). In addition, for one German respondent digital skills presuppose the display of user-competency and one British respondent defined digital skills as knowing how to work with new programmes.

On the other hand, some respondents had a more narrow understanding of the term ‘digital skills.’ These respondents associated very specific skills with this term, such as being able to use social media (2 British respondents, 1 German respondent), to share information online (1 British respondent), to search and edit information online (2 British respondents, 1 German respondent), and to write emails (2 British respondents). Further narrow definitions were to be able to do online marketing or brand advertising (2 British respondents, 1 German respondent), to do web-design or graphic design (2 British respondents, 1 German respondent) or to be able to do desktop-publishing (1 British respondent). Respondents also thought about the coding, editing, inputting and analysing of data (2 British respondents, 1 German respondent), to create spreadsheets (1 German respondent), automation testing (1 British respondent), and repairing soft- and hardware (1 German respondent).

Besides broader understandings and specific skills, some respondents listed specific programmes, platforms or operating systems such as Windows (1 British respondent) or Microsoft Office (3 British respondents) but also social media platforms like Twitter (1 German respondent) or Instagram (1 German respondent).

More than a quarter of the German speaking respondents refused to answer, which might indicate that the German respondents struggle with this term or question. In total, there were seven answer refusals (2 British respondents and 5 German respondents.)

For a more detailed breakdown of the respondents‘ answers please refer to the tables in the attached PDF document.

Digitalization/ Use of digital systems

Assessment of own digital skills