Self-assessed Internet skills of long-term unemployed persons in Finland

Rehabilitation Foundation in Finland developed in recent project (in Finnish, Laasanen & al., 2019) an enhanced personal employment support model for long-term unemployed persons. One essential element was to understand what kind of digital skills the participants had, especially using Internet. Understanding that helped the project team to provide targeted support both from the interest and need perspective.

The digital skills analysis was based on the framework created by van Deursen and Helsper (2014). They have developed a set of 35 items and factors to measure Internet skills, grouped under five themes. The framework was tested in the Netherlands and UK.