THE INFLUENCE OF GENDER, SELF-ESTEEM, AND COMPUTER SELF-EFFICACY ON THE INTERNET USAGE PATTERNS OF SELECTED HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS IN BANGKOK

Abstract

The current study attempted to examine the influence of gender, self-esteem, and computer self-efficacy on the Internet usage patterns of high school students in Bangkok, aged between 13 and 19 years who have access to the Internet for social and academic purposes. Reliability analysis was conducted on the self-esteem and computer self-efficacy scales for the purpose of maximizing the internal consistency of these two measures. MANOVA was conducted to test for gender differences in the variables of self-esteem and computer self-efficacy and the three Internet usage patterns of number of hours of computer use at home, hours spent on the Internet at home, and hours of computer use at school. The results indicated that: (1) female participants reported spending more time using the computer at home and at school than their male counterparts, whereas the male participants reported spending more time on the Internet at home than their female counterparts. (2) MANOVA results indicated that there was no overall gender effect for all variables of this study, namely: Internet usage patterns, self-esteem, and computer self-efficacy. (3) To test the impact of the male and female participants’ levels of self-esteem and computer self-efficacy on the number of hours of computer use at home, Internet at home, and the hours of computer use at school, multiple regression analysis was conducted for the male and female participants. The results showed that for both the male and female participants, levels of self-esteem and computer self-efficacy were not significantly related to their Internet usage pattern.