How Does Socio-Educational and Family Factors Predict Internet Usage in Higher Education?

Abstract

This study aims to identify the socio-educational and family factors that predict internet usage by analyzing a sample of 910 college students selected from four districts of Himachal Pradesh using a self-prepared internet usage scale. This scale has 33 items in total which are classified into four dimensions namely educational, social, and online as well as entertainment purposes using factor analysis. High and low internet users are classified based on the Mean +_ SD criteria. Multinomial logistic regression is performed both for the direction of variable association as well as magnitude among variables. A multinomial logistic regression model was performed to evaluate the impact of gender, residential background, type of family, parental education and employment and family income on the likelihood of students using the internet in which a low internet usage group is entered as a reference group. From the regression analysis, it is found that type of family, stream of study, parental educational level along parental employment significantly predict usage of the internet among college students.