THE LIBRARY QUARTERLYaward recogniz

THE LIBRARY QUARTERLY
award recognized the selected site as a model community network among
its peers and other similar types of community-based ICTs [14].
The population of this study was the current and former registered users
of the selected community network who were eighteen years old or older.
One thousand people were randomly selected from a database that included
all registered, current, and former users since the inception of the
service.
Instruments
A systematically structured self-administered questionnaire was developed
for data collection by either adopting or modifying existing measures. The
questionnaire was pretested with a total of fifty current and former users
during January–March 2001. They were heterogeneous in terms of their
demographic characteristics and the length of time they had been members
of the service. The questionnaire was revised through cognitive interviews,
a technique developed to identify problems in a questionnaire
by having respondents think aloud during or shortly after completing the
survey. The questionnaire was finalized by balancing the feedback from
the pretest participants and research experts and the reliability scores of
established scales whenever available. This first questionnaire was mailed
in March 2001. Three weeks later, a brief second questionnaire was mailed
to measure community network use, the ultimate dependent variable. This
survey research design helped ascertain the direction of influence from
the predictors to community network use.
Measurement operationalizations
Research variables are operationalized below. The appendix tablelists a
variable summary showing the wording of the questionnaire items and
reliability test scores computed for the data of the current study.
Community network use.—Community network (CN) use was the ultimate
dependent variable in this study and was measured with the following two
question items:
• The frequency of use. Respondents were asked the question, “How often
did you use [name of CN] during the past 30 days? Please circle one
only.” Seven use frequencies were given for selection: not at all, about
once or twice, a few times, about 1–3 times a week, about 4–6 times a
week, about once a day, and more than once a day [36–37].
• The total number of weekly use hours. Respondents were asked an openended
question, “How many hours in total did you use [name of CN]
in the past week? [Count only the hours you were actively involved in
using it.]”
The responses to each of the two questions were standardized to compute
an average standardized score of community network use.