Development and validation of digital smartness scale: A tool to assess digital skills in professional contexts

New media literacy (NML) involves a series of crucial skills needed for living and working in the mediated and participatory society of the 21st century. Along with the emergence of new media technologies, individuals are now expected to know the socio-cultural and emotional aspects of new media beyond its technical characteristics. This paper seeks to extend the notion of digital skills by developing and measuring an additional set of abilities: the Digital Smartness (DS). DS is a set of technical and interpersonal skills for a professional practice of ICTs, based on professional identity designing and communication activities. Moreover, this article outlines the main results and methodological challenges of an ad hoc scale to measure digital smartness. The development, properties, and uses of the Digital Smartness Scale (DSS) are described. Dimensionality, reliability, and validity data are presented for two studies (pilot test and validity test) involving a total of 2.257 individuals. The psychometric properties of the scale were examined. The four-factor 34-item DSS revealed good content validity, structural validity, construct reliability, construct convergent validity and discriminant validity. Moreover, findings indicated the novelty of this skill set, thanks to low convergent and incremental validity.