Measuring Anxiety Towards Wiki Editing: Investigating the Dimensionality of the Wiki Anxiety Inventory-Editing

General rights Copyright for the publications made accessible via the Edinburgh Research Explorer is retained by the author(s) and / or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing these publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. Take down policy The University of Edinburgh has made every reasonable effort to ensure that Edinburgh Research Explorer content complies with UK legislation. If you believe that the public display of this file breaches copyright please contact [email protected] providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Although wikis are common in both the workplace and in Higher Education, little research has studied the wiki user experience. Recent literature highlights that users may be anxious about editing wiki content; yet in most of this research this anxiety has not been measured quantitatively. Although computer anxiety metrics exist to measure anxiety towards technology, they lack specificity and relevance to the wiki editing context. This paper reports two studies used to research the validity and reliability of the wiki anxiety inventory-editing (WAI-E), an inventory developed and used to measure anxiety in wiki editing (Study 1) and to explore the factor structure of the WAI-E and the validity and reliability of the resulting subscales (Study 2). Study 1 shows that the WAI-E, when used as a uni-dimensional structure, shows high reliability and validity. The principal component analysis conducted in Study 2 showed that the measure converged on a three-factor solution with factors measuring positive affect, editability anxiety and contribution judgement anxiety. The subscales showed high reliability and validity. It therefore seems that although the validity and reliability of using the WAI-E as a uni-dimensional construct are high, the use of the metric as such hides the true structure and nuances of the concept of wiki anxiety. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS • The paper presents a self-report inventory (wiki anxiety inventory-editing, WAI-E) to measure anxiety in wiki editing. • The uni-dimensional WAI-E has good reliability and validity. • Principal component analysis (PCA) highlights three factors: positive affect, editability anxiety and contribution judgement anxiety. • These factors also show high reliability and validity. • PCA shows that use of uni-dimensional WAI-E masks strong factor structure of WAI-E. The benefits of using wikis as collaborative tools for knowledge sharing and co-creation such as their facilitation of democratic knowledge construction (Glaser, 2004), their dynamic nature leading to …