Cross-Cultural Findings of Computer Literacy Among the Academic Olympians.

This paper investigates computer literacy related cross-cultural factors that predict academic ability among mathematically gifted Olympians in Finland (N=72, 68 males and 4 females) and the United States (N=80, all males). The following research questions were formulated: (1) What is the nature of the connection between computer skills and development of the Olympians' mathematics skills (grade point average, or GPA)? (2) Does computer literacy contribute to the academic productivity? (3) What re the most culture-dependent components of computer literacy? The results for the first and second research questions indicate that computer literacy is more of a cross-culturally distinctive than a connective factor contributing to the development of the Olympians' mathematics skills and later academic productivity. In the Finnish data, the influence of computer literacy was positive for both GPA and productivity as opposed to the United States data where the influence was found to be negative. The third research question is investigated with dependence and classification modeling. The results indicate that the most culture-dependent variable measuring computer literacy is the use of the Internet. The components that predict the best culture-dependent computer literacy are programming skills, basic computing skills, and self evaluating computing skills. (Contains 24 references.) (Author/AEF)