the attitude of the trainees of computer institutes of isfahan toward the computer and the social factors affecting it

the progress made in the field of information technology has increasingly encouraged social researchers to conduct social studies. researchers employ technology acceptance model (tam, davis, 1984, 1985.2000) to analyze the mechanism and the use it and the social factors affecting it. the attitude towards the computer is one of the variables of tam. the purpose of the present paper is to study the subscales of the attitudes towards the computer and the social effects of these attitudes. this study is based on the information obtained from 300 computer trainees studying in computer institutes of isfahan. the research instrument used was attitudes toward computer scale (loyal and greesard, 1984, 1985). it is to be noted that the questionnaire has four subscales: computer confidence, computer linking, computer anxiety and computer usefulness. to analyze the data, we used spss.11. the types of analysis are the following: descriptive statistics (one variable, bivariable), inferential statistics (t-test, correction, factor analysis, multivariable regression analysis, path analysis). the results showed that the level of attitudes toward the computer was very high. there was not a significant difference between the attitude of the male and the female toward the computer, or between the attitude of the married and the unmarried. there was a significant correlation between the three variables (age, use of computer at home and computer experience) with attitudes toward the computer. also, there was not a significant correlation between the two variables (job and education) with the attitude towards the computer. the analysis of the regression indicated that the factors such as age, sex, use of computer at home and computer experience are more predictive of the attitudes toward the computer. most of the changes in the attitudes toward the computer are determined through these four variables.