Digital skills have become important for navigating in today’s information society. While prior digital inequality research has mostly focused on studying general internet uses and skills, research on smartphone-specific inequalities is still scarce. In addition, existing measurement instruments mostly rely on survey-based self-reports or small-scale laboratory-based performance tests that are susceptible to measurement and representation errors. In this study, we examine the feasibility of using novel scenario-based measures to evaluate the level of smartphone skills in the general population. Scenario-based measures evaluate smartphone skills by assessing how well respondents perform a set of smartphone activities described in a hypothetical situation. METHODS & DATA Data were collected in the German Internet Panel, a probability-based online panel of the general population aged 16-75 in Germany, in March 2022. Respondents were asked to answer three scenario-based questions and rate their general smartphone skills. The scenario-based questions asked respondents to correctly order a set of steps to carry out smartphone activities, such as buying a train ticket with an app that is not yet installed on their device. We examine response distributions and correlations between the scenario-based and self-reported measures. We also assess whether predictors of smartphone skills differ between the two measures. RESULTS The scenario-based and self-reported measures are significantly positively correlated and measure the same underlying construct as determined by an exploratory factor analysis. Compared to self-reports, the scenario-based measures, however, have substantially greater rates of item-nonresponse. Older and less educated smartphone owners are significantly less likely to respond to the scenario-based questions. The predictors of smartphone skills differ by respondents’ sociodemographic characteristics across the two measures. Older, female, and more educated respondents are more likely to underreport their smartphone skills in the self-report compared to the scenario-based questions. ADDED VALUE Methodologically, we demonstrate the feasibility of using scenario-based measures of smartphone skills in an online survey. Substantively, we contribute to the growing body of research on the second-level smartphone divide.
