Measuring Online Communication Attitude: Instrument Development and Validation

This paper reports a series of studies that develop an empirically-derived instrument for assessing online communication attitude, a multidimensional set of individual cognitive-affective constructs that influence media choice. The first study inductively develops an initial item pool and tests dimensional structure via exploratory factor analysis. The second study further refines this structure and also tests the association between online communication attitude and media use in same-sex friendships. Finally, the third study deductively tests global model fit via confirmatory factor analysis, and establishes concurrent validity with theoretically related communication constructs. Beyond identifying motives underlying media choice, the instrument developed here possesses heuristic potential for clarifying media choice theory and elaborating the association between communication competence and media choice.