Parents' profiles concerning ICT proficiency and their relation to adolescents' information literacy: A latent profile analysis approach

Given the pivotal role of parents in their children's educational development, numerous studies have examined the impacts of parents' information and communications technology (ICT) proficiency on adolescents' information literacy. However, previous research has tended to treat parents as a holistic unit, ignoring the individual uniqueness of each parent in analyses. Thus, the first aim of this study was to explore the parent profiles in terms of ICT proficiency, which were developed through a person-centered approach employing latent profile analysis. Three distinct parent profiles were identified: quiescent users, compliant users and active users. The second aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between the parents' profile memberships and adolescents' information literacy. The results showed that, in general, adolescents whose parents were identified as active users and compliant users tended to perform better on an information literacy test than those of parents categorized as quiescent users. More specifically, those adolescents whose parents were classified as active users achieved significantly higher scores in the information literacy test than those of parents who fit within the profiles of compliant users and quiescent users. Based on the findings, this paper discusses several implications and strategies for enhancing the adolescents' information literacy.