An analytical framework to incorporate ICT as an independent variable

This chapter presents an analytical framework to guide the assessment of information and communications technologies’ (ICTs) impact on individual-level development (or wellbeing). Based on the content analysis methodology, we argue that the amount of polysemy and lack of common basic guidelines in ICT’s research fields constitute one of the main barriers to both the incorporation of ICT into a broader research problems spectrum (outside the ICT researchers’ communities) and, consequently, to widen ICT’s impact research. After a synthesis of the historical development of the digital divide concept (a framework for the analysis for digital inequalities), we discuss and select some plausible analytical models to assess ICT’s impact on wellbeing. Based on Selwyn’s approach, we advocate the idea that every researcher testing an ICT-related hypothesis should analyse at least three stages of hierarchical digital achievements (access, usage and appropriation) plus one last divide stage: ICT’s outcomes (measured by the effect of previous stages on the dependent wellbeing variable). Finally, we propose some guidelines for the applications of this framework and present an actual case of use, showing how this framework guided the research design of this author’s SIRCA II’s project, which tested the effect of digital skills on education-to-work transition.