Toward a Measure of Collective Digital Capacity: an Exploratory Analysis

Digital training initiatives must shift toward critical cultural and social practices that encourage full participation in community affairs. However, no measure exists to account for digital capacity at the community level. Thus, we present this late-breaking work to begin designing and validating a measure of community digital capacity and report the results of an exploratory factor analysis. The analysis is based on 553 respondents across the United States to estimate an initial three-factor structure of (1) social digital capacity, (2) individual digital capacity, and (3) infrastructure. Such questions address limitations with existing theories that do not show digital inequities in the context of underlying systemic and structural challenges posed by one’s social position. Our preliminary results suggest a potential measure for researchers and practitioners to understand whether people can access shared digital resources and activities with acceptable scientific guarantees, including favorable Akaike and Bayesian information criteria.