Building Resilience to Misinformation: A Cross-National Development of the Digital Media and Information Literacy Scale (DMILS)

TL;DR

This paper introduces the Digital Media and Information Literacy Scale (DMILS), a validated tool for assessing media literacy competencies across nations to combat misinformation.

Contribution

It develops a comprehensive, psychometrically sound instrument that measures multiple dimensions of media literacy, including subjective and objective assessments.

Findings

Developed an 18-item self-report and 16-item objective knowledge battery.

Validated the scale with strong structural, convergent, and predictive validity.

Created a short form with 8 self-report and 8 objective items.

Abstract

Amid growing concern about information quality and credibility in digital media environments, researchers and educators still lack a concise, comprehensive yet psychometrically sound instrument for tracking the competencies that help people navigate this landscape. This article develops the Digital Media and Information Literacy Scale (DMILS), a robust and multidimensional measure that distinguishes domain (digital vs. information/news), competency type (knowledge vs. skill), and is measured through both subjective and objective items. Through two empirical studies with three nationally matched samples in the United States and Singapore (N = 1,498), we developed an 18-item self-report battery and 16-item objective knowledge questions, showing strong structural, convergent, and predictive validity, along with a short form (8 self-report and 8 objective items). By offering a parsimonious yet multidimensional yardstick, DMILS enables rigorous evaluation of media literacy interventions and supplies a common metric for cross-national research, critical for building an information ecosystem resilient to mis- and disinformation.