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  The development of an online reader self-perception scale for efl university students

  Beyond the attention of various types of knowledge and skills, self-perception becomes a consistent and considerable link with levels of online reading achievement. Self-perception which mediates between knowledge and behavior plays an important role in the determination of the ability to comprehend and respond to information on the Internet. While the previous systematic instruments were developed to measure self-perception of reading among native English speakers in print-based environments, the present study filled the gap by developing a scale for measuring self-perception of online reading among EFL college students. The Online Reader Self-Perception Scale was grounded in the social learning theory (Bandura, 1977, 1986, 1997) and relevant literature related to online reading in a nonnative English speaking country (e.g. Adunyarittigun, 2015; Leu al et, 2004, 2013; Stroller, 2013). The scale had been refined and validated through multiple procedures: interview, experts’ validation, and observation through the think-aloud method before it was administered to 400 second-year students from different majors at a university in Thailand. The exploratory factor analysis and item-total correlations indicated that the existence of two dimensions (Social Reference and Self-Reflection) with 15 items each represented the clearly interpretable relationship and the identification of each dimension. Cronbach’s alpha internal reliabilities also indicated a strong coherence of the items on each dimension. In order to confirm the relationship between online readers’ self-perception and their online reading achievement, the correlational analyses indicated the significant positive correlations between the data gained from the scale and the scores gained from the online reading test. Also, the regression analysis indicated that the online reader self-perception is a significant predictor of online reading achievement. Pedagogical implications and recommendations for future research are presented based on the findings.